Corcoran Hall, George Washington University
Corcoran Hall represents an important period in the development of a George Washington University campus.
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Corcoran Hall is one of two buildings constructed after a 1922 plan by architects Albert Harris and Arthur B. Heaton for a Georgian Revival quadrangle to house George Washington University. Completed in 1924, Corcoran Hall is representative of the early twentieth-century notions of formalism and order.
The careful spatial arrangement of buildings on the cross-axial Harris Plan was to provide a clarity of purpose and harmony to the campus setting. The classical concerns for balance, proportion and scale renewed by the teachings of the École des Beaux-Arts are found in Corcoran Hall, and the Georgian Revival manifestation of these principals is characteristic of American institutional design. Corcoran Hall is particularly important as the first building constructed for this plan, thus marking the beginning of the formal campus plan envisioned for the university at its permanent site in Foggy Bottom.
DC Inventory: November 18, 1987
National Register: April 12, 1991
