George Finley Bovard Administrative Building, USC

George Finley Bovard Administration Building was dedicated the week of June 19, 1921. John Parkinson, architect. The building cost $620,000, the organ in the auditorium cost $35,000.

At the time it was built, it housed the offices of administration, the offices of the department of instruction, the auditorium, and 27 classrooms. The building included the James Harmon Hoose Hall of Philosophy and the Thomas Blanchard Stowell Hall of Education. The architectural design is Italian Renaissance, designed by John Parkinson, a leading architect of the Southwest. The exterior of the building was faced with brick in colors varying from brown to purple and laid in Dutch bond. The roof was patterned in mission tile of varying colors.

The clock tower is 37 feet square and rises to 116 feet. The sculptures by Johan Caspar Lachne Gruenfeld [Johann Caspar Laehne Gruenfeld] on the tower are "representative of the progress of civilization":

On the East side from left to right are statues of John Wesley (1703-1791), founder of Methodism and Bishop Matthew Simpson (1811-1884), preacher and college president. John Wesley "was of good lineage, having in his veins, on both his father's and mother's side, the blood of an old nobility, and what was to him as productive an inheritance, that of four or five generations of Nonconformist clergymen, who had suffered for conscience's sake, and have left venerated names in the religious history of England." (from National Cyclopedia of American Biography, volume 5, p. 57). Matthew Simpson was the first president of Indiana Asbury (De Pauw) University and a methodist bishop.
On the North side from left to right are statues of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), two great American statesmen and presidents.
On the West side from left to right are statues of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-47 BC), the Roman statesman, lawyer, and orator, and Plato (c. 428 BC-348 BC), the Greek philosopher.
On the South side from left to right are statues of Phillips Brooks(1835-1893) and Borden P. Bowne(1847-1910), "American leaders in religious and philosophic thought, embodiments of spiritual ideals linked to wisdom and learning." Phillips Brooks was the fifth P. E. bishop of Massachussets and 158th in succession in the American episcopate. Borden Parker Bowne was a Methodist pastor and chair of Philosophy in Boston University.

Note on Sculptor:

Johan Caspar Lachne Gruenfeld (Johann Caspar Laehne Gruenfeld, 1872-1954) also made a fountain for Pershing Square, and was commissioned to make the foliate ornamental carvings in the pediment of City Hall. (Moure, Nancy Dustin Wall Moure. Painting and Sculpture in Los Angeles, 1900-1945. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980. P. 41)

Interior shot of the auditorium, 2008

Trojan bench, in front of the building.

Bibliography:

"The George Finley Bovard Administration Building University of Southern California, Dedication Week, June 19-23, 1921." From an untitled and undated pamphlet in University Archives.
"New Edifice To Be Completed in August, 1920--Cost $500,000." Southern California Trojan (October 14, 1919), p.1.
"The Disputed Eight." Alumni Magazine (December 1919), pp. 11-12.
Dixon, James Main. "The Statues on the Tower." Alumni Magazine (April 1921) pp. 4-5.

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Photographs taken by Ruth Wallach, USC Libraries, in 1996, 1998, 2008, 2015.