Gould Hall

Gould Hall is the home of the OU College of Architecture. It was earlier home to the School of Petroleum Engineering. Charles Newton Gould, for whom this building is named, was born in Ohio in 1868, but moved to Kansas when he was 18. One hot August evening, while training to be a high school teacher, he heard a lecture on “The Geological Story of Kansas.” Sixty years later he still could remember that transforming moment. After Gould earned his master's degree at the University of Nebraska, David Ross Boyd, the University of Oklahoma's first president, invited him to establish the nation's first program in petroleum geology. , When he arrived in Norman in the fall of 1900, he found conditions at the university's single building primitive, but the challenge only energized him. In 1908 he organized the Oklahoma Geological Survey and served as its first director. By the time Professor Gould's illustrious career had ended, he was one of the most respected field geologists in the United States, the teacher of a generation of important geologists and the founder of the best-known school of its kind in the country. He is credited with 260 scientific papers, 572 reports on oil properties and 251 studies for the National Parks Service. He was a major force behind Oklahoma's oil industry. Wherever geology was seriously studied, his name was known. , Along with his reputation as an accomplished scientist, Gould was noted for his tolerance, his patience with students, his poetic sensitivity, grace, and kindness. He died in 1949. , Built in 1951 with an addition completed in 1966, Gould Hall served as the petroleum geology building. In 1990 the College of Architecture moved into Gould Hall. OU President David Boren won approval for an extensive $33 million renovation and expansion of the building beginning in 2008. It was re-dedicated in 2011. The renovation and expansion allowed, for the first time, for all five divisions of the College of Architecture's divisions, including Architecture, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Regional and City Planning, as well as the Haskell and Irene Lemon Construction Science Division, to be in the same building to promote the integration of all of the disciplines. It also became home to the university's new Institute for Quality Communities. Among the special spaces in Gould Hall is the Joe and Jayne Buskuhl Gallery, honoring a gift from noted Dallas architect and alumnus C. Joe Buskuhl and his wife.