Jonathan R. Kennedy persuaded Colorado's territorial legislature to establish this school by demonstrating the abilities of his three deaf children to the members. William Palmer donated the original 35-acre hilltop site, which grew to include a 200-acre farm. The buildings generally reflect styles popular for institutions in the period of construction, from no longer extant Italianate buildings to a Neoclassical administration building (1906, Charles S. Thomas. Most of the twentieth-century buildings are stone and/or brick and flirt with the Collegiate Gothic style. Lamar Kelsey went Modernist in his preschool (1967). G. Cabell Childress designed a Post-modern addition (1984) to Wark Auditorium (1922) that incorporates the distinctive stone trim, steep roofs, and parapeted gables characteristic of most structures on this handsome campus.