When Forbes published a list of “the world’s most beautiful campuses,” it spotlighted some of the usual suspects: the spired Gothic buildings of Oxford, the ivy-covered stone of Princeton, the stately columned porticoes at the University of Virginia. But one scribe averred that other college grounds—including Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus—shouldn’t be overlooked. Scott Carlson, author of The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Buildings & Grounds” blog, praised Hopkins for putting up paradise and unpaving parking lots. “I just like what the university has done at Homewood over the last several years in terms of beautification—specifically, getting rid of blacktop and replacing it with green space or brick,” he says. “Areas of the campus were unified in the process.”

Photo: Richard Anderson