The college of the Holy Cross has seen some dramatic changes in its 179 years. One of the country’s oldest Catholic institutions of higher learning, the school in Worcester, Massachusetts, has weathered the transition from men-only to coed, from a largely Christian to a nondenominational student body, and—just last year—from the leadership of ordained clerics to its first-ever lay president, Vincent Rougeau, also the first African-American to hold the post. Through it all, Holy Cross has maintained a consistent connection with the arts, an educational mission that Rougeau says is deeply rooted in the teaching of the school’s Jesuit founders. “Saint Ignatius Loyola, who established the order, was very interested in music,” says Rougeau. “The arts are an important part of who we are.”
They’re also an important part of what the college seems to be becoming. This month, Holy Cross welcomed a new addition to its hilltop campus overlooking downtown Worcester: the Prior Performing Arts Center, a sprawling 84,000-square-foot hub for dance, music, theater, painting, and sculpture, as well as a multipurpose social nexus for students and visitors alike. Designed by celebrated New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), with Boston-based Perry Dean Rogers, the facility is perched atop a sloping site on the terraced campus’s uppermost level, with the rest of the college spreading out in radial spokes below it. “It’s literally at the heart of the institution,” says Charles Renfro, the DS+R partner who oversaw the eight-year design and construction process.
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