Below is a composite of two aerial photos of the Boston College campus. The photos were taken approximately 47 years apart — the top photo in 1964 and the bottom one in 2011. With all the many changes that have made the University of today so different from the one we attended 1964-68, the physical changes to the campus rank pretty high.

Photos — Office of University Communications, Boston College

Buildings and locations gone, many new buildings and campus settings in place. And, in 1964, Chestnut Hill was the only campus. Since then, BC has added the Newton and Brighton campuses, expanding the total size of the campuses from Chestnut Hill’s 121 acres to 338 acres overall.

Remember the “barracks”? Roberts and McHugh? Carney was brand new in 1964 and Higgins was still to be built. The hillside was just that — a hillside, and we still had that little pond over by St. Ignatius. Is it too much to call the campus at which we arrived in September 1984 “pastoral”? Perhaps so, if only in comparison to the much denser site today.