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Originally Posted by Hali87
King's College in Halifax is conceptually modeled after Oxford, and the layout of its tiny campus on the edge of (larger and ostensibly "American-style") Dalhousie reflects this (apparently... I've never been to Oxford).
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Dalhousie was originally modeled after the University of Edinburgh. It was founded by the Earl of Dalhousie. Dalhousie is not organized into colleges like Oxford. King's is sort of analogous to an Oxford-style college but doesn't have the same kind of affiliation with Dalhousie. I am not sure about U of T; presumably not every student there belongs to one of the colleges. Dalhousie has some old stone residence buildings but as far as I know they're just a part of the overall residence options and don't have any special admissions requirements or much in the way of special social events or traditions and so on.
You probably already know this if you went to King's but it is in a historical sense a Loyalist offshoot of King's College in NYC which later became Columbia University. Columbia was founded as King's. King's College in Halifax is the oldest English-speaking university in the Commonwealth outside of the UK.
One thing that always bugged me about King's is that they have the quadrangle setup but the middle of it is half parking lot. In older pictures it was partly or mostly lawn. Likewise Dalhousie has a couple large parking lots now that were lawns. The Dal and King's campus areas are full of almost-great spots that are marred by the odd ugly building or poor landscaping choice, although it has gotten a bit better in recent years. King's built an ugly precast library building in the 90's which has aged pretty badly, and I am sure would have looked nicer if built more recently. It was a big mistake for them to not use real stone.
I guess I'd say the main style of the older Dal and King's buildings is sort of Georgian-inspired. There is a sort of folksy local version of Georgian styles that uses rough stones and is quite appealing.
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