College of Agriculture

Top stories of 2024

Story by Ericka Bethel
January 2, 2025

The Top Story of 2024

Who designed the Gateway Arch? & other footprints left by landscape architects on Purdue’s campus

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hen you imagine Purdue University or pull up images in a Google search, it’s likely that you see pictures of herringbone brick pathways, limestone pillars with metal arches and greenspaces full of students. Not too long ago, this wouldn’t have been the case. The Purdue University of the 1970s would be unrecognizable to most people on campus now.

John Collier, however, still remembers the asphalt drives, parking lots and the busy highway that once cut campus in half. Collier arrived at Purdue in 1979 as a student in environmental design, a major in a college that no longer exists. One semester in, he was so awed by the miniature model of campus in Purdue Memorial Union that he knew he had to change his major to become one of the people who maintained it: a landscape architect.

While the smell of burning styrofoam and hot-wire cutting deterred Collier from modeling, he did become passionate about designing outdoor spaces that bring people together. He interned at the Facilities Planning Office as an undergraduate and stayed there for 30 years, eventually becoming the director of campus master planning in 2004.

“I was here when the Campus Master Plan was updated in 1986 by Sasaki Associates. I had just graduated. I was at the right place at the right time,” Collier said.

Even John Collier’s original concept sketch of the Gateway to the Future arch includes a few students standing underneath it, taking in the views of Purdue Mall (photo credit: John Collier).

Standing under the Gateway to the Future might make any Purdue alumni feel nostalgic, but John Collier can see over 40 years worth of changes from under the arch.