One-hundred-eighty one years ago a dream assumed visible form
on Nistiquona Hill. The dreamers were Joseph Jacques Ramee, a French architect, and Eliphalet Nott, Union's president; the dream was a new home for the College. At the heart of the Ramee campus was a great domed cylinder-a Roman rotunda. Now, that centerpiece is being restored to the majesty of its youth. Here are a few photographs of a Nott Memorial many of us have never seen.
It was not contemplated in building the Alumni and Memorial Hall that it should be permanently used as a Library. For its intended uses viz. as
a place for holding great gatherings and receptions of the Alumni and others, it is admirably adapted.
William Appleton Potter, architect, 1881
The building will be devoted to the uses of a Library and of an Art and Memorial Alumni Collection in one large room, with alcoves and galleries, open from floor to roof.
Eliphalet Nott Potter, President of the College, 1874
I have now the opinion that the best plan for a Graduate Hall will be to put up a central building of two stories making the one a chapel & the other the Grad. Hall. This would relieve the present Geol. Hall and give us room for some space for our library & museum. When however a library is needed we would erect a fireproof building on purpose for it-say in the space back of the Central Building.
Jonathan Pearson, treasurer of the College, 1856