The University of California campus in Irvine is a relatively new one, having only been founded in 1965. I graduated from there in 1980, and one of my daughters graduated from there in 2011.
This panoramic picture was taken in May, 2006. (Click to enlarge.) It was taken from near the middle of what is now known as Aldrich Park. (Campus map here.) The campus was planned around a 21 acre, bowl-shaped area, with the first buildings in a ring around it. Subsequent construction was to be done in expanding rings and zones around this central core.
When I was there in the late 1970s, the first ring of buildings was just getting completed. A couple of the next ring of buildings had been started and the athletic complex was there, but all of the rest of the buildings in the second and third rings and beyond were just a plan somewhere in a drawer. Only two of the eight housing areas seen here existed in 1980.
Dan Aldrich (“Chancellor Dan”) was the founding chancellor for UCI and was still there when I graduated, retiring in 1984. The story line in my day whenever anyone asked him what his plans were for retirement were along the lines of, “I’m going to get 100 feet of hose and a shovel and whip that park into shape!” (Note that it was not exactly a dump by any means.)
This panorama comes from sixteen images of 3456 x 2304 pixels (8 megapixels each) taken with a Canon Rebel XT DSLR, combined into an image of 19262 x 3137 pixels (60.4 megapixels).
When I was a student there, the joke was that “UCI” stood for “Under Construction Indefinitely.” That obviously hasn’t changed much. Whenever I would visit my daughter and walk around campus, the most common phrase I said was, “That wasn’t here when I was here!”
It’s been four years since she graduated, and she was visiting the campus recently for something or the other. Her comment? “There’s all these new buildings that weren’t there when I was there!”
Time marches on.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 