Armstrong State University began as a city junior college in 1935, accommodated in the former house (8.43) of shipping magnate George Ferguson Armstrong across from the northern edge of Forsyth Park. The school evolved into a girls’ school through the 1940s and, as it rapidly expanded, began to acquire and erect buildings near the house. In 1959 the white-only Armstrong College joined the University System of Georgia and in 1964 achieved four-year, degree-granting status. Its campus comprised six buildings clustered near Monterey Square, and local preservationists feared the impact of its continued expansion. To preserve the historical integrity of the Monterey Square area, Donald Livingston and the Mills B. Lane Foundation (of Mills B. Lane Jr.) donated 250 acres of land ten miles south of downtown to Armstrong for a new campus, which opened in 1966. Laid out around a symmetrical rectangular quadrangle, eight buildings using a simplified Georgian Revival style constituted the original campus designed by Hansen and built by the Whally-Strong Company. Over time, numerous buildings have been added, as well as a wide variety of plantings, turning the campus into an arboretum. The college was desegregated in 1979, and in 1996 it acquired university status and a new name—Armstrong Atlantic State University—which was simplified to Armstrong State University in 2014.