Quick Take
The Cowell Provost House is more than a beautiful example of mid-century architecture, writes Silicon Valley attorney and Cowell College alumnus George M. Kraw. The house, he writes, embodies UC Santa Cruz's founding vision of a close-knit campus where students and faculty gather and connect. Rather than let another historic building deteriorate, he argues that the university should invest in turning it into an event center for the campus and community. It's a practical way to preserve a piece of UCSC's history — and bring its original spirit back to life. He offers to help lead the fundraising charge.
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When UC Santa Cruz opened in 1965, it made a promise that set it apart from every other University of California campus. Students would not disappear into a sprawling, anonymous institution. They would belong to small residential colleges, where faculty and students shared meals, argued over ideas and got to know one another.
Cowell College, the first of those colleges, captured that promise in its motto: the pursuit of truth in the company of friends.
Few buildings embody that motto better than the Cowell Provost House.
Today, its future is uncertain. The campus should act.
The house was designed by Theodore Bernardi, a partner in Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, the San Francisco firm the university selected in 1962 to design Cowell College. Bernardi was a leading figure in the Bay Region tradition, the California modernism that favored natural wood, open plans and buildings that sit comfortably in their landscape rather than dominate it. The provost house reflects that approach.
Overlooking East Field and Monterey Bay, it makes a faculty residence feel like part of the campus around it. It is architecturally significant: a piece of UCSC’s founding vision, rendered by one of California’s important mid-century architects.
It is also significant for what has happened inside it.
From the start, the provost house was meant to be both a home and a gathering place. Photographs from 1969 show students tie-dyeing and making pottery there. Generations of students have come for dinners, readings, receptions and Cowell traditions such as the Dizikes Concert. The Cowell Press, where students learn hand-operated letterpress printing, was attached to the house. In recent years, it has hosted weddings, student celebrations, conferences, classes and department meetings and lectures.
Now the campus is moving away from using provost houses as residences, and Cowell House is unavailable for reservations, with only a note about pending renovations on the Cowell website. This is a familiar pattern for aging buildings on public campuses.
Deferred maintenance becomes an argument for doing nothing, and doing nothing becomes an argument for demolition. This is what happened to the chancellor residence on campus, which was red-tagged a decade and now sits abandoned and decaying.
The better path is clear: convert the Cowell Provost House into a dedicated event center for the campus and the community.
The building already works for this purpose; the college has used its public rooms for events for decades. What it needs is investment in accessibility, a modern catering kitchen, updated restrooms, building systems, and sensible parking and scheduling?
Freed from its double life as a private residence, the whole house could serve gatherings, ending the awkward split between a public side and a private side.
UCSC needs such a space.
The campus has few intimate, beautiful venues for alumni receptions, donor events, visiting speakers, faculty retreats, student awards nights and small conferences. Too often, those events land in classrooms or off campus.
An event center at Cowell House, with its lawn and its view of the bay, would give the university a signature place to welcome people. Rental income from weddings and outside groups could help pay for its upkeep. Preservation and practicality point the same way.
There is also a question of stewardship.
UC Santa Cruz’s early architecture is a remarkable collection. The founding colleges were designed by some of the most important architects working in California in the 1960s, and together they tell the story of a bold experiment in public higher education. Every building lost diminishes that story. Mid-century buildings are especially vulnerable: old enough to need serious repair, but not old enough for many people to recognize their value. Communities across California have lost modernist landmarks and regretted it once they were gone.
UCSC can learn from that.
UCSC faces hard budget choices. But saving the provost house need not come from the operating budget alone. This is the kind of project alumni and friends of UCSC can rally behind, through a dedicated fundraising campaign, naming opportunities and partnerships with preservation organizations.
I will gladly be among the first to contribute.
UCSC was founded on the idea that place matters, that the setting in which people learn and gather shapes who they become. The Cowell Provost House was built to prove that idea.
Let’s not lose it.
George M. Kraw is a Silicon Valley lawyer and a graduate of Cowell College.
