Project
Summary

In 1928, firm founder Ralph C. Flewelling, FAIA, began the first of several commissions with USC by designing Mudd Hall of Philosophy. Conforming in spirit with other buildings on the USC campus, Mudd Hall possesses a number of distinctive features, the most striking being the 140 foot tower that stands at one corner of a rectangular courtyard. The building was devoted entirely to housing offices, classrooms, seminar rooms and lecture halls for USC’s department of philosophy. Hoose Library, also part of the hall, houses more than 200,000 volumes. After the Northridge earthquake in the 1990s, the firm provided rehabilitative and restoration services, which included reproducing elements as close to original con-ditionas possible. Finials, decorative cornice portions, and special roof tiles from the tower’s spire, destroyed during the Northridge earthquake, were replaced.