History

Utrecht neighbourhood De Uithof in which the Utrecht Science Park (USP) is located was the estate of nearby St.-Laurens Abbey in Oostbroek since the Middle Ages. One of the abbey’s oldest farms was in the area now known as De Uithof. The area had a rural character up to the second half of the twentieth century.

Expansion

Utrecht University had faculties in a large number of buildings in Utrecht city centre and adjacent neighbourhoods. When a number of departments needed more room because of growth the university board went looking for locations within the municipality for the expansion they needed. They looked at the last undeveloped area in the municipality, the rural area to the east of the city. Because it was part of the New Holland Water line, a defensive area that allows flooding, the area was classified as a ‘forbidden circle’ with limited options for construction. When the Circles Act was abolished in 1951, the university started developing plans for moving the Veterinary Science faculty from the former location of the Veterinary Surgeons’ School on the Biltstraat to De Uithof. The move took place between 1967 and 1988.
 

Construction

The first construction plans were presented in 1958. Once the municipalities involved agreed (until 1975 De Uithof was located on the border of the municipalities Utrecht, Zeist, Bunnik and De Bilt), construction got underway in 1962. The original plan was strictly geometrical with a focus on the roads running exactly north-south and east-west. The roads were named after famous foreign universities like Harvard and Cambridge. Initially De Uithof consisted exclusively of the Veterinary Science faculty and a few teaching and laboratory buildings. In the 1960s more faculties started running out of room and a new location in De Uithof was sought. In the 1990s a final few faculties of the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, the University Medical Centre Utrecht and the Wilhelmina Children’s hospital moved to De Uithof. In 2011 the university site was renamed Utrecht Science Park.

(source: Wikipedia)