For students, the restored Nott Memorial is a wonderful place to study.
For visitors, the building and the display it contains about Union's history are a look into the past.
For architects, the Nott is one of the most remarkable buildings in America, and at the April Alumni Council meeting four individuals whose careers center on architecture assessed the building and discussed its importance.
Paul Turner '62, professor of art at Stanford University and author of Campus: An American Planning Tradition, noted that he has spent many years studying the career of the "mysterious" French architect who designed Union, Joseph Jacques Ramee.
Ramee, said Turner, produced a sweeping design that was by far the most ambitious and innovative plan for an American college or university up to that time. Among the many innovations was a central domed rotunda.
"The idea of a simple, circular building goes back in antiquity, with the Pantheon in Rome being a prime model," Turner said. "In America, Ramee's plan for Union apparently was the first design in which a whole institution was conceived and organized around a temple-like structure of this sort."
Thus began a long and important tradition in American architecture, with the most famous example coming only four years after Ramee's design — Thomas Jefferson's plan for the University of Virginia in 1817.
"For many years some architectural historians have wondered if Jefferson may have been influenced by Ramee's plan for Union," Turner said. "The full story is complex, but my conclusion is that Jefferson was indeed influenced by Ramee's plan-not necessarily the whole plan, but one particular aspect, and that is the idea of a domed rotunda as a centerpiece."
Turner said the idea was communicated to Jefferson by the architect Benjamin Latrobe, who must have become familiar with Ramee's plan through contacts in Philadelphia.
Another aspect of the Union campus that has puzzled historians is the original intended use of the Nott. Turner said that it was meant to be the College chapel but that President Eliphalet Nott eventually changed his mind.
Another question frequently asked concerns the discrepancy between the cool, simple, neoclassical style as conceived by Ramee and the "supercharged, High Victorian character" of the Nott as designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter.
"Is the discrepancy good or bad?" Tumer asked.
Turner said that Nott, near the end of his life, still intended to build the central building more or less as Ramee had designed it.
"But the architect he chose, Edward Tuckerman Potter, was understandably more interested in the style of his own day," Turner said. "After Nott's death in 1866, Potter took full advantage of the innovations of his day. The result was two very different styles on the Union campus.
"Would it have been better if the Nott had been built following Ramee's plans?" Turner said. "In this case, the architectural discrepancy is actually a plus.
"First, the building's quality is so great. Second, it is far enough removed from the original Ramee buildings that one can appreciate both modes of architecture on their own terms while still seeing them function together as a unified composition.
"Third, this stylistic variety adds the element of time to the campus," he continued. "It creates a visual record of the cultural change that has occurred over Union's history.
"And finally, the building's present restoration is in itself part of the building's significance, for it adds a new kind of meaning — affirming the importance the College attaches to its cultural and architectural heritage."
To Sarah Landau, professor of art history at New York University, the Nott Memorial signifies the College's emphasis on scientific studies as well as the Victorian view that the arts find their highest perfection when they're associated with architecture.
Although Gothic was the state of the art style for the day, she said, Edward Potter later regretted his design, saying the building should have been more in keeping with the rest of the campus.
Also speaking at the Alumni Council meeting were Phyllis Lambert, founder and director of the Centre Canadien d'Architecture in Montreal, and James Alexander of the architectural firm of Feingold Alexander & Associates, Inc., which designed the restoration of the building.
Lambert paid tribute to the late Daniel Robbins, the May I. Baker Professor of Visual Art at Union, for his continuing efforts on behalf of the Nott, and Alexander described the ideas proposed and decisions made during the renovation project.