Doug Marsh ’82 isn’t listed as the architect of record for any of the 179 buildings on Notre Dame’s main campus. That was never a goal.
“I’m just the caretaker in the middle of it all,” says Marsh, the vice president for facilities design and operations and University architect, who will retire in May after a 30-year career at Notre Dame.
Marsh has played that steward role during an era of record expansion and reinvestment on the 1,250-acre grounds. No other individual in Notre Dame history has had a greater impact on the school’s built environment, which has changed dramatically in the past three decades.
Building and infrastructure projects during that time include the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, the relocation of Juniper and Douglas roads, the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, a renovated and expanded Morris Inn, and several major science and engineering facilities, to name a few. Largest of all was the $400 million Campus Crossroads project that renovated Notre Dame Stadium and added three buildings near its perimeter — while home football games proceeded as usual inside the historic venue for two autumns during construction.
“We had a thousand people a day working on that project, and they came from across the country. That was a lot of fun,” Marsh says.
Beyond the school’s traditional boundaries, Marsh led the planning and building of Eddy Street Commons, the college-town development just south of campus, as well as the design and construction of Notre Dame facilities in Rome, London and Dublin. The list goes on.
The task of designing the campus and preparing for future construction stretches back to the University’s founder, Father Edward Sorin, CSC, who planned the original layout and many of the first buildings.
Marsh is the first person to hold the title of University architect, which he’s had since 1999. During his tenure, the physical space in campus buildings has grown 55 percent — from 7.3 million to 11.3 million square feet — and 60 major buildings have opened.
As a child, he never imagined such a future. He was born and raised in South Bend, where he attended Riley High School.
He sometimes visited Notre Dame with his uncle, Bruce Harlan ’49, ’80M.A., the University’s chief photographer for 44 years who died in December at age 96. (See “Rewind the Film.”) Occasionally, Marsh experienced the thrill of standing on the sidelines at Irish home football games, carrying film and assisting as his uncle shot game action.
He recalls a life-changing conversation he had with Harlan over Christmas 1974. A high school sophomore at the time, Marsh longed to go to Notre Dame but wasn’t sure it was possible. Harlan encouraged him to work hard and apply. “Don’t give up on your dream,” he said.
“It was a four- or five-minute conversation. It changed my life,” says Marsh, who doubled down on his schoolwork. Two years later, he was accepted to Notre Dame.
Marsh enrolled as an engineering major but always had an interest in architecture. At age 9, he observed his father — an engineering technician at Bendix Corporation — design on paper what would become their family’s longtime home. “I watched him draft at the dining room table. I absolutely fell in love with that process,” he recalls.
As a college freshman, Marsh often wandered around the architecture department, then a unit within the College of Engineering, studying the student work he saw pinned on the walls. By Christmas break, he had declared an architecture major. He completed the five years required to earn his degree, including a year of study in Rome.
After college, he went into private practice for 13 years, designing area office buildings, hospital additions and other projects.
One day in 1995 Marsh read a classified ad for a facilities engineering project manager position opening at Notre Dame, in a department then known as the physical plant. Again, he sought counsel from his Uncle Bruce, who again advised him to follow his dream.
Marsh got the job. By 1999, he was leading the division. Today he manages a staff of more than 500 in planning, design, construction, utilities, maintenance and landscaping.
For more than 40 years — starting with O’Shaughnessy Hall in 1953 — Notre Dame had relied on a Minneapolis-based firm to handle most of its architectural projects. By the end of the 1990s, the University had decided to shift much of that work to an in-house team.
In retirement, Marsh will do some consulting work for the University. He and his wife, Pam, also expect to visit their sons, Adam ’11 and Alex ’14, and their families.
As the architect prepares to bow out of his leadership role, he offers a prediction of how campus might change in the future.
He foresees continued reinvestment in existing buildings, especially research facilities that increasingly have extra space as some laboratories and offices move into the expanded McCourtney Hall on the East Quad. “That’s going to create an opportunity to repurpose and rethink our science and engineering buildings,” such as Fitzpatrick, Cushing and Galvin halls, he says. “We’re constantly studying how we could improve those and have them ready for another generation or two.”
Two student residence halls are under construction on that corner of South Quad formerly occupied by Fisher Hall — where Marsh lived for a year as an undergraduate — and Pangborn Hall. The current master plan recommends demolition of Crowley Hall (which opened in 1893) and Riley Hall of Art and Design (a former chemistry hall built in 1920) and replacing them with more efficient and densely planned structures.
Marsh led the drafting of the University’s campus plan in 2002 and three updates since then, including the current plan. The University’s commitment to collegiate Gothic architecture is renewed and is expected to last. “We have our own version of collegiate Gothic,” Marsh says. “Ours has a certain distinctiveness really inspired by Alumni and Dillon halls,” he says, referring to two 1930s residence halls still in use on South Quad.
One of seven tenets listed in the campus plan states that new buildings are expected to reference Notre Dame’s stylistic roots. “That doesn’t mean they’re solely collegiate Gothic,” Marsh notes. He points to classical buildings such as Walsh Family Hall of Architecture and the art museum; several Second Empire-style structures near the Main Building; and Art Deco touches on the three buildings adjacent to the Stadium.
“There’s a uniqueness to every building, but in the end we want the icons to shine through. We’re not wanting every new building to be an icon,” the architect says, referring to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the Main Building and Hesburgh Library. “All the other [structures] need to be supportive and salute those icons,” he says.
What might campus look like 30 years from now?
Marsh doesn’t think Notre Dame’s footprint will have grown dramatically, certainly not as much as it has in the past three decades. University leaders are content with the current size of the student body, so there won’t be a need for many new residence halls. “Our research mission will continue to be supported within the boundaries of our current campus. We have several decades of growth if we continue on a trajectory by better utilizing our existing buildings, before we even begin to think about new structures,” he says.
Marsh has often met with groups of alumni to discuss building projects and plans. Even those who haven’t visited campus in decades are engrossed. “I would talk about the campus,” he says, “and everybody hung on every word.”
Margaret Fosmoe is an associate editor of this magazine.