Quote from Industrial Chicago, 1891, p.273: "The plans for the new Baptist university were completed in June, 1891, and presented to Secretary T. W. Goodspeed by the architect, Henry I. Cobb. A combination of the Venetian and Romanesque is manifested in the dormitories and recitation hall. He suggested granite as the material, and in the plan for the lecture hall, provided for a four-story structure, massive in its general features, with heavy square windows in three stories and arcades in the fourth story and high halls. The roof is of tile, with a heavy carved cornice. The total length is two hundred and seventy feet and the average width sixty feet. On the first floor provision is made for a receptionroom, general offices and the offices of the faculty and board and of the executive offices of the university. There are six lecturerooms, and a large lectureroom, 30x61 feet, with a seating capacity of two hundred and fifty. In the rear of the building there is a wing, 54x80 feet, to be used as a chapel. The second, third and fourth floors of the main building and of the wing are to be cut up into recitation rooms. The university dormitory is of granite, with tiled roof, corresponding to the lecture hall. The length is three hundred and fifty feet and the width thirty-two feet, except at the center and at the ends, where the building is widened to forty feet, to break the lines. It is four stories, divided into bedrooms and studies, and will accommodate one hundred and fifty-six students. Mr. Cobb's divinity dormitory is similar in plan to the first, except that it has a total length of two hundred and eighty-eight feet. In the university dormitory the building is divided by six fire walls, practically cutting it into so many separate buildings. In the divinity dormitory the corridors on each floor run from end to end. The university hall, the chapel, the observatory, library, gymnasium, women's dormitory and other buildings all find a place in the general plan. The site is bounded by Fifty-seventh street, Midway Plaisance, Ellis avenue and Lexington avenue."

Cobb Hall, located on Ellis Ave. near 58th St., was the university's first purpose-built structure. Constructed like all Cobb's university buildings of blue-gray Bedford cut limestone, Cobb Hall, named for the benefactor Silas Cobb, included a lecture hall on the first floor as well as offices and classrooms. The side of the building facing Ellis Ave. is divided into three pavilions, each with regular groups of rectangular windows which have transoms provided by horizontal stone mullions about one-third of the way from the top. At the outer edges of the end pavilions are projecting bays topped with gabled dormer windows. The elevation facing the quadrangle, which contains the entrance, is meant to be the principal façade. It is divided in the same fashion as the Ellis St. front except that an entranceway flanked by great capped piers is substituted for the central pavilion. Over the principal doorway is a two-story pointed window. The interior of the building has been remodeled several times.

Originally dormitories, this second group of buildings constructed on campus is located just south of Cobb Hall. These three buildings are treated in elevation as one with the gable of the central five-story building flanked by the four-story gables of the buildings on either side of it. These two buildings are identical but mirror-images of one another. The entranceways provide the chief opportunity for ornament with moldings around the windows and flat ornament on the spandrels. In the central building, the bay above the entrance projects for emphasis.

Demolished in 1965, this residence was originally home to the school's Professor of Physics.

Originally, Lake Forest College was to share the Durand Institute with the town of Lake Forest. The building, which initially contained galleries and an auditorium, now houses academic departments including the college's art department. In addition to the building's Richardsonian, heavily rusticated red granite, its organization and general ornamental scheme derive from Richardson's Billings Library at the University of Vermont. The building's central section boasts an entrance arch and a beautiful band of foliate ornamentation running around the entrance pavilion just above the arch. Four receding smaller and smoother stone arches mark the path from the entrance arch to the doorway. Though the side pavilions are simpler, the double-transomed west windows of the attic story recall the Studebaker residence's ballroom windows (see Residential section).

The building was shuttered in 1975 by the local fire marshal (due to its large, open, divided stairway) and the interior was altered extensively before reopening circa 1980. The renovation architect enclosed and reconstructed the stairway in metal, and opened the atrium under the surviving skylight to the lower level. It is now a three story space, in the character of the original style, with wood support posts fabricated to match the originals. The angled wood ceiling remains. The old Auditorium was reconfigured into two class rooms on the main level, and a studio behind the Romanesque proscenium arch (still visible from the studio). However, most historic architectural features have been preserved including the interior hall to which the entrance leads that rises two stories to a handsome wooden ceiling surrounding a rectangular skylight.

Foster Hall stands at the southeast corner of the central quadrangle at the intersection of 59th St. and University Ave. Flanked by south- and east-facing gables, a turret rises at the corner of the building. Foster Hall terminates the row of Kelly, Green, and Beecher Halls, but its relationship to this group is ill-defined. Because Foster Hall was conceived as an element in the 59th St. buildings, little regard was paid to siting it within the quadrangle formed by the other buildings.

Like Graduate, Middle, and South Divinity Halls, this group of dormitories on University Ave. just north of 59th St. consists of three buildings treated in elevation as a single design, with the central building Green Hall flanked by identical smaller ones. The refined ornament includes a very handsome group of bay windows on the first floors of Kelly and Beecher Halls.

Snell Hall on Ellis Ave., north of Cobb Hall, was designed as a dormitory but displays a floor plan similar to that of the Walker and Haskell Museums with the necessary walls for sleeping rooms added.

Located just to the east of Cobb Hall, the Walker Museum is located in the midst of the central quadrangle. The octagonal tower set in the rear wall of the museum, containing the stairwell, provides relief to the general rectangularity of the group.

A rendering of the unbuilt dormitory survives in the Lake Forest College Archives & Special Collections.

Demolished c.1964, the Eliza Remsen Cottage originally housed a master's apartment and quarters for 25 male students. Rectangular in plan, the three stories and a basement building was brick with a high-pitched roof. A high steep gable, echoed on at least one additionally elevation of the building, marked the front entrance. The cottage was virtually free of ornament and historical reference.

Kent Hall is located at the northwest corner of the central quadrangle, near the Hull Court & Biological Laboratories. The building's octagonal auditorium attached to its rear is one of Cobb's most beautiful interiors. The octagonal shape serves the function of the large hall and effectively organizes the building's windows of differing levels, which coordinate with the steeply sloped interior floor. The interior walls are lined with red and yellow pressed brick, while great arches spring from the eight corners of the walls, intersecting to form the framework of the wood ceiling. The stair tower, just east of the main entrance, breaks the symmetry of the façade. The richly decorated entrance doors are excellent both in detail and in scale.

Located in the northeast section of the main quadrangle, Ryerson Laboratory consists of a central block with wings on either side. The central block with the entrance is a square tower with Gothic tracery and battlements; it breaks the symmetry of the façade like the stair tower of the Kent Laboratory. On its east side, an attached narrow tower with thin rectangular windows rises above the crenellations. The building was a gift of Chicago philanthropist Martin Ryerson in memory of his father.