Posted on Jan 1, 1999

Carl George, professor of biology emeritus, and Robert Uzzo '89 shared a lively
interest in the archiecture of the Nott Memorial. One result of that interest was a
monograph, as yet unpublished. The following excerpt offers their interpretation of the
symbolism of Union's most famous building.

The Man Who Put It Together

Edward Tuckerman Potter, architect of the Nott Memorial, was born in Schenectady on the
25th of September, 1831. His father, Alonzo Potter, was professor of rhetoric and natural
philosophy at Union, and his mother, Sarah Nott Potter, was the only daughter of Eliphalet
Nott, president of the College.

Edward received training at the freshman and sophomore levels in Philadelphia and then,
in 1851, transferred to Union to major in science for his junior and senior years. He
studied conic sections, rhetoric, mechanics, chemistry, political economy, French, German,
Italian, optics, electricity, moral philosophy, astronomy, and elements of criticism. He
did not take any Union course on Euclid and Plato, but this could have been done in his
freshman or sophmore years — a point which will hold some relevence later on.

In 1854 he became an apprentice with Richard Upjohn, a prominent architect in New York
City, and he held this role until 1856, when he established his own offices. Edward's
first project (1855) was a small Methodist church about three miles south of Rhinebeck,
N.Y.; it still stands. His first independent commission for a full structure was the
president's house at Union, accepted in 1856. Alumni or Graduates' Hall (early names for
the Nott Memorial) is certainly one of his more important and was initiated in 1858.

Given the financial problems with Graduates' Hall, Potter waited until 186l for his
first major realized commission — the First Dutch Reformed Church in Schenectady. This
church seems to have set him well on the road of a career in church, and especially
Espicopalian, architecture. In all, he planned seventy-nine structures, mostly churches;
sixty-six were built, and forty-two survive, assuming, of course, that all of his works
have been found.

His buildings are sensitively placed and exposed for good viewing. His churches,
especially, are bright with polychrome slate, colorful stone, variegated voussoirs,
painted cast iron cresting, polished gray and brown granite columns, and gilded
stencilling of ceilings and walls; textural with quarry-faced ashlars set off with dressed
belt courses; and ornate with elaborate fenestration, finely worked capitals, dated
kneelers, textual inscriptions both inside and out, crocketed gables with finials, and
fancy door hinges.

Imbued with architectural symbolism within the Episcopal tradition, Potter seems to
explore symbolism to discover and be fascinated with proportionalities, among these the ad
quadratum, the Golden Section (the ratio of 1:1.618), and the significant yet delicate
positioning of hexalphas and pentalphas, using Victorian-Gothic as the vehicle of his
expression. The nature of his work may be viewed as more symptomatic of an even larger and
all-encompassing plan — that of the universe as an orderly, integrated macrocosm. Potter
had a systematic, Pythagorean approach to his architecture, and his churches were
constructed as integrated, coherent, systemic entities that were his echo of the universe.

A Fascination With Stars And Ivy

The Nott Memorial tantalizes with many questions, and certainly one of them is,
“What is the significance of its primary decorative feature, the thirty-two hexalphas
of the slated exterior of the dome and the 709 illuminators?”

Six- and five-pointed stars — hexalphas and pentalphas — are almost invariably worked
into the stone, glass, wood, and slate of projects designed by Potter. Because he wanted
to avoid “meaningless ornamentation,” it seems clear that the symbols mean
something. But because he left little guidance regarding the symbolic implications of his
work, we must play detective.

The hexalpha was widely and distinctively used by Potter. The First Dutch Reformed
Church (1862-63) of Schenectady, in its original execution, bore a stone hexalpha finial
about thirty inches in span on the gable of the consistory. Hexalphas of identical form
about twelve inches in span were also carved into the lower left and right corners of the
wooden alter.

St. John's Episcopal Church (1867-69) in East Hartford, Conn., All Saints' Memorial
Church (1868-72) in Providence, R.I., the Church of the Good Shepherd (1867-69) in
Hartford, Conn., Trinity Church (187l-74) in Wethersfield, Conn., and St. John's Church in
Yonkers, N.Y., provide other examples of Potter's use of the hexalpha.

Let us now turn to the architect's use of the five-pointed star, or pentalpha.

The First Dutch Reformed Church Of Schenectady carries a pentalpha on each of the two
mullions of the ground level windows of the tower. The stars, about five inches in
diameter, are in relief within an encised circle. Christ Episcopal Church (1863-64) in
Reading, Pa., Packer Hall (1866-69) at Lehigh University, St. John's Episcopal Church in
East Hartford, Conn., St. Paul's Memorial Church (1866-70) in Stapleton, N.Y., the Church
of the Good Shepherd in Hartford, and the Caldwell H. Holt Memorial Parish House (1894-96)
in Hartford are other buildings where pentalphas figure prominently.

Most of Potter's institutional works also carry another five-pointed motif — the ivy,
Hedera helix. This ivy motif, with an emphasized pentagonal quality, insinuates
everywhere; it twists in and about the dates of the kneelers and Potter's delightful
monograms, and it appears in the iron cresting, the massive door hinges, the stencilling,
the carved wood of the interiors, many of his splendid capitals, the textual bands of the
arches, and on many of the unique details such as the gargoyle-like ship hulls and textual
kneelers of the Colt Parish House in Hartford.

The Stars And Ivy Are Symbolically Important

Three generalizations regarding the stars and the ivy emerge:

The first is that these design elements are used in most of Potter's buildings.

The second is that these design elements are used in places of architectural prominence
and symbolic importance (such as kneelers, corbels, imposts, mullions, plinths, key
voussoirs, alters, and central windows). In the Nott Memorial we must accept that the use
of the hexalpha in the roof slating and the pentalphas in the illuminators is much more
than, as Potter has already said, a “meaningless ornament.”

A third point is that the stars have also been used apart from their conventional
Christian applications. Packer Hall at Lehigh University displays the pentalpha, and the
Nott Memorial uses both the pentalpha and the hexalpha; both are academic and not
ecclesiastical buildings. The First Dutch Reformed Church further affirms this point in

another way; as Potter noted, “In designing the details of this church, no
received religious symbols could be used, this being expressly forbidden by the Synod of
Dort.”

But What Are The Symbols Saying?

The architect's own writings shed only a teasing light on the matter. He remarks, in
his booklet on the First Dutch Reformed Church of Schenectady, that ” . . . those who
are determined to see symbols in everything will of course do so. For them there will be a
hidden meaning in . . . the Hexalpha which crowns the consistory . . . in the very pattern
of each slate, and in every form and line.”

Much later, in the twilight of his career, he takes evident pride in publishing a
letter to him dated July 28, 1903, by John

Shendan Zelie, a retiring minister of the same church, in which Zelie remarks, “I
ought to speak of all the symbolism which you introduced into that church. The
unobtrusiveness of it has always been to me one of the most precious things in the church.
It was there, always there, but in such a way that it waited to be found out and did not
force itself upon anybody.”

And so our detective work leads us into the history of the hexalpha and pentalpha, and
we quickly encounter the mathematicians and geometers of the Renaissance, enthralled with
the Golden Section; in turn, these scholars direct our attention to Euclid, Plato, and
Pythagoras.

Especially relevant is Euclid's division of a line in “extreme and mean
ratio” — later named the Golden Section by Paccioli and currently referred to as
Phi. The irrational (or incommensurable) number 0.6180 is the mathematical expression of
the ratio; the arms of the pentalpha divided by the sides of the body of the central
pentagram is a nearly ubiquitous expression of the relationship. It is also important to
note that the angles of the pentalpha are thirty-six, seventy-two, and 108 degrees.

The hexalpha, composed of two interwoven equilateral triangles, is thus

linked to Phi through the icosohedron, a polyhedron of twenty equilateral triangular
faces constructed by interpenetrating three rectangles having sides in the ratio of Phi.

In the Nott Memorial, the ratio of the height to the face-to-face diameter of the main
drum is 0.62. The ratio of the combined height of the upper structure from the edge of the
hip roof to the foot of the metal work of the lantern to the diameter of the main drum is
0.62. The calligraphic band is 0.62 upwards of the distance from the lower edge of the hip
roof to the base of the lantern. The distance of the column centers to the inner wall
vertices divided by the distance of the columns centers to the center of the primary floor
is 0.62.

With this inspiration in mind, we enlisted the help of the Buildings and Grounds staff
(who operated a cherry picker so we could photograph the great arches of the Nott Memorial
at the right level and distance) and Professor of Photography Martin Benjamin (who gave us
splendid blowups for analysis). With these elegant photographs and an ancient manual on
the construction of pointed (Gothic) arches, we determined that the arches have an
exquisite design — each span line is divided into left and right parts, and these, in
turn, are twice divided into “extreme and mean ratio” (remember Euclid).

After this division, perpendicular lines are drawn upwards to intercept an extension
(rising at sixteen degrees from the horizontal) of a prominent edge of the footing stone.
Lo and behold, the intercepts are the “centers” basic to the construction of the
three arch sections of the windows. Further, we discovered that the joints between the two
sets of voussoirs converged on two points established by constructing squares on the four
parts of the divided span lines.

Why would Potter take such obvious delight in such a creation? We have one suggestion.
In Book Six of The Republic, Plato divides a line in quite the same manner as on our
photograph, indicating that our search for understanding is represented by four sections
— the outermost being the realm of shadows and reflections, the next our world of
realities, the third the world of mathematical description, and the innermost near the
center of the window the forms — and presumably the good and true at the end of the line
— or center of the window.

The Nott Memorial is thus transformed and enlarged. It has become a monument to our
search for Truth and the Good. The message can be seen from any direction ans it seems an
appropriate and important one for our academic community. This may seem a flight of fancy,
but we are somewhat reassured because Potter uses the Greek word pistis as a relief device
on the eastern facade of the Colt Parish House in Hartford, and this is the word Plato
uses for one of the four sections of his divided line.

A Pythagorean Temple

A central element of the Pythagorean philosophy is that there is a profound numerical
order, unity, and harmony in the Universe (the macrocosmos) as symbolized by the
icosahedron and the hexalpha, and in man (the microcosmos) as a refinement, a
distillation, an analog of this grand plan.

The hexalpha probably emerged most strongly as a symbol of harmonious duality and in
particular the ten primary contrasting qualities of Pythagoras — the limited and
unlimited, odd and even, male and female, one and the many, right and left, rest and
motion, straight and curved, light and darkness, good and bad, and the square and the
oblong. In essence, the hexalpha and icosahedron represent the union of complementary
forces.

In this light, it is highly appropriate for the dome of the Nott Memorial at a college
called Union to bear its array of hexalphas and pentalphas. The Nott Memorial may be
viewed as a Pythagorean Temple of the Muses and a beacon leading us toward the Truth and
the Good.

We must not presume that Potter's symbolary for the Nott Memorial has been exhausted by
this brief account. The arches of the four doors need analysis; the five floral tile
arrays of the central field of the encaustic tile are enigmatic; the 112 windows of the
oculus may have their message as well; and the lights of the original illuminators
probably have more to say. Yes, there is additional work to do on decoding the Nott
Memorial.

 

References

Landau, Sara Bradford. 1979. Edward T. and William A. Potter. Garland Publishing Co.,
N.Y. 490 pp.

Potter, Edward Tuckerman. 1868. A statement of the considerations influencing the
design of the First Dutch Reformed Church, Schenectady, N.Y. (erected A.D. 1862-63) with
an appendix containing a short description of the building. Baker and Godwin, Printers. 32
pp.

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Posted on Jan 1, 1999

The
new twenty-inch telescope in the F.W. Olin Center is letting students take on exciting
research projects as they explore distant galaxies and stars.

Jonathan Marr, assistant professor of physics, says the new, professional-level
telescope will enable students to undertake interesting astronomical projects using
professional-level equipment and methods.

Aaron Reidy, a senior physics major and astronomy minor, is anxious to use the new
telescope on his senior thesis project investigating certain types of galaxies. “I
didn't even think of doing a project like this until I learned that we would get the
telescope,” Reidy says. “It's a great opportunity for me to get hands-on
experience with the latest technology.”

Reidy has been interested in astrophysics since he completed a research project with
Marr during the summer of his freshman year, when they investigated the physical
conditions in a specific quasar using observations made with ten radio telescopes
simultaneously from Hawaii to Maine.

Now, working with Marr and Rebecca Koopmann '89, visiting assistant professor of
physics, Reidy is analyzing the visible spectrum of the light from quasars using the new
telescope's spectrograph. The spectrograph, which works much like a prism by spreading
light into all the retrospective wavelengths and colors, measures the levels of absorption
and emission of light in each object and then maps the spectrum of light. These
measurements in turn reveal the motions of the gas in the quasars and help determine the
atomic composition of the source of light as well as the temperature and density of the
gas.

Mark Kostuk, a sophomore chemistry major, plans to take advantage of the telescope in
his independent study as part of the College's Scholars Program. Working with Jason Dunn,
visiting assistant professor of physics, Kostuk will study specific globular clusters to
determine their ages with the telescope's CCD camera. The camera is sensitive to low light
levels and provides a digital picture that can be sent directly to a computer for
analysis. “The camera provides a fast way to get a lot of quantitative data about
stars,” Kostuk explains. “It does a lot of the grunt work for you.

“With the camera and filter wheel, which allows us to look at the different colors
of stars, we can determine how old stars are based on their properties, such as the color
of the light they emit,” he continues. “We can then plot the stars on a graph
and gain a general idea of what types of stars are still going strong and which have moved
on in evolution.”

Marr says it is this kind of advanced student project that makes the new telescope
exciting. “Working with this telescope gives students a real sense of what it is like
to do real astronomical observations. This also gives them a leg up when applying to
graduate schools.”

The Physics Department plans to use the new telescope for a course in the spring on
observational astronomy, and General Education astronomy students have already completed
one lab in the new observatory. The Physics Department also plans to have monthly open
houses for the public and field trips for schoolchildren.

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Posted on Jan 1, 1999

Anthropologist
Sharon Gmelch has lived in a covered wagon, cut sugar cane in the Caribbean, and removed
blubber from an Arctic seal, but the research for her most recent book was conducted in a
surprising place — the classrooms at Union.

Gmelch's new book, Gender on Campus: Issues for College
Women, is an outgrowth of teaching “Gender and Society,” the
introductory women's studies class.

“This book is different from any other book that I've ever done,” Gmelch
says. “It is informed by anthropology, but it is not conventional anthropology at
all.” Instead, much of the book comes from class discussions and student journals.
“Students kept bringing up the same topics. I saw a need for a book like this. Most
books in women's studies are either classic feminist textbooks or collections of readings
on women and gender, while most guides to college life deal with financial aid and other
nuts and bolts issues. I tried to combine the best of the two and focus specifically on
gender issues on campus.”

Gmelch's anthropological research has ranged much more widely. She undertook her first
field research while a graduate student, when she attended a field school in Ireland very
much like the anthropology program she now directs in Barbados every other year with her
husband, George Gmelch, also an anthropology professor at Union.

“I spent three months in a small fishing village,” she explains. Alone in a
foreign country for the first time, she had no contact with anyone outside of the village
community. “We were on our own. I'll never forget walking into the village, dragging
an enormous suitcase stuffed with books, clothing, and a portable typewriter. But I ended
up learning a lot and discovering that I was much more resourceful than I knew.”

Doing anthropological research, she says, is like working on a complex puzzle where the
picture and sometimes even the external shape are unknown.

“The hallmark of anthropological research is fieldwork, which means living in
another culture for an extended time,” she says. “You observe, participate as
much as possible, talk to people on a daily basis, and through it all, keep detailed field
notes. You are trying to acquire an insider's perspective — to understand the culture
from their point of view — not just from the vantage point of your own culture.”

Gmelch's first major research was with Irish travellers, a Gypsy-like people. She and
her husband lived in a horse-drawn covered wagon. The bushes were their privy, a campfire
their kitchen.

“There were twenty families or so, children everywhere, underfed dogs, piles of
scrap metal, and an assortment of tents, wagons, trailers, and shacks,” she says.
“Most families also kept a horse or two. I did much of my research sitting at
peoples' campfires talking, but I also went begging and scrap metal collecting with the
Travellers.

“”With only canvas or thin trailer walls between us, everyone knew everyone's
business, including the fights that broke out at night after the men got back from the
pubs. It wasn't like living in a house where you can go in, shut the door, and
disappear.”

The friendship she formed with one woman, Nan Donoghue, led to research in later years
that resulted in the book Nan: The Life of an Irish Traveling Woman.

Anthropology has also taken Gmelch to Alaska. One summer was spent with the Inupiag
(Eskimos) above the Arctic Circle studying resource use and subsistence activities —
hunting, fishing, and trapping. Another two-summer study took her to the island town of
Sitka. There, she and George Gmelch examined differences in resource use between the
Tlingit (pronounced Klinket) Indians and the non-native population.

In the early 1990s, she and filmmaker Ellen Frankenstein returned to make A Matter of
Respect, which has been shown on PBS. The film shows how Sitka's Tlingit are reviving
aspects of Tlingit culture — art, story telling, dance, language, and traditional
subsistence skills.

Every other year, the Gmelches take Union students to the Caribbean for an anthropology
field school. Each student lives in a village with a Bajan family and carries out
participant observation research. “At the age of nineteen or twenty, students learn
to adapt to a new culture and to establish relationships with people of all ages, from all
walks of life,” she says. “They gain a lot of confidence as well as solid
research skills.”

Gmelch recently left her position as director of women's studies and has returned to
research in Alaska, working with a collection of photographs taken between 1899 and 1929.
She uses the photographs as a device to draw out people's memories and feelings about the
changes that have taken place in Tlingit culture.

“To a large extent, anthropology is a way of life,” she says. “To me, a
big reward is the constant sense of discovery. The unexpected happens every day. I love
the challenge and the stimulation.”

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Posted on Jan 1, 1999

Poets
have been writing about it for years — that human desire to connect with others, to bring
joy to others, to share one's self with another.

For Ari Gottlieb '99, Amy
Rilling '98, and Chris Welch '00,
the natural place to do this is in the theater. Last summer, the trio completed an acting
program at Oxford run by the British American Drama Academy (BADA). Learning from the best
in British theater, they honed the skills they had developed at Union and raised their
acting to a new level.

The drama academy was founded in 1983 so students from around the world could study
classical theater with the leading actors and directors of Britain and America. Guests
last summer included many acclaimed actors of the Royal Shakespeare Company, among them
Fiona Shaw, leading actress of the Royal National Theatre; Oscar-winner Ben Kingsley; and
stage and screen stars Alan Rickman, Sir Derek Jacobi, and Kevin Spacey.

Bill Finlay, director of Union's Yulman Theater, says the program gives students
“the opportunity to live, eat, and breathe theater. They see that there are people
out there who have the same crazy passion about acting that they have. They come back to
Union with a different perspective on acting, and that permeates Union's theater
program.”

BADA's program at Balliol College includes nine hours of classes a day for the
approximately 160 students. The program offers classes in Shakespeare and modern acting,
movement, voice, and audition techniques as well as one-on-one tutorial sessions.

BADA perfectly complements learning theater in a liberal arts environment, Finlay says.
“BADA provides the intensity that someone who wants to be an actor needs, and it
gives Union theater an international presence,” he continues.

But Finlay is quick to point out that the foundation in liberal arts training is an
important component for actors. “A good actor, in my opinion, has to be a
well-educated person,” he explains. “A good actor should continually bring in
all of the things that he or she sees in his or her life, and then putting that into the
art form. Someone who is absolutely focused in a narrow field is a dull actor, I
think.”

When Gottlieb, Rilling, and Welch arrived at Union their freshman years, none of them
were planning careers in the performing arts. Gottlieb planned to study biology, Welch was
focused on becoming an anesthesiologist, and Rilling was a political science major.

When Welch decided that he no longer wanted to pursue medicine, he tried acting and
loved it. “The reason I wanted to go into medicine is because I wanted to help
people, but I think that acting gives you an opportunity to really touch people.”

Gottlieb was hooked by his involvement in a Union theater department production.
“Equus, my first show at Union, was a real turning point for me,” Gottlieb says.
“Everything that could have gone right went right. I built the set for Equus, and I
took a central part in the play, and it was a nice sort of immersion experience for me.
Everyone was so encouraging that I just said, 'This is where I want to be right
now.'”

Rilling completed her political science major with a theater minor, and discovered
“that political science didn't really make me happy like theater does.”

All three agree that Union's faculty members bring something special to the department.

“In the theater department, you work next to the faculty,” Welch explains.
“It's not like you're the student; you're the friend.”

“The smallness of the department also allows so many more opportunities,”
adds Gottlieb.

Their background in Union's liberal arts curriculum, specifically in English, also
provided an important base for their acting.

“When I was at BADA, I thought almost every day about Professor Ruth Stevenson's
'Shakespeare' and 'Art of Poetry' classes,” says Welch. “Her intense, pointed,
precise approach to language was exactly what this program needed, so I really kept coming
back to that.”

Gottlieb and Welch admit that their English courses now seem just a bit dull compared
to working with the premiere actors of the London stage. “The people who taught us
were amazing and Oxford was beautiful, but I think that what made it so impacting was the
fact that everyone there was doing what they wanted to do — theater,” says Gottlieb.
“There was an instant connection with everyone there.”

Rilling is now in her first year at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts thriving in a
conservatory program not unlike that at BADA.

“The best part of BADA was that it was so personalized,” she says. “We
were completely surrounded by actors who were serious about their craft. No one questioned
our goals –  we were there to become better actors.”

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Posted on Jan 1, 1999

For a structure described as a high-technology classroom and laboratory
center, it was appropriate that the dedication of the F.W. Olin Center was a multi-media
event.

As some guests settled into their seats in the center's auditorium, other guests took
seats in nine classrooms scattered throughout the building. There they would watch the
dedication ceremony via closed-circuit television.

It was a fitting way to demonstrate some of the technical capabilities of the College's
newest building. Also fitting was the day-long appearance by the last American to walk on
the moon.

President Roger Hull noted that the dedication was taking place 185 years after work
began on the Union campus.

“Just as Eliphalet Nott wanted to prepare young men for his time, we want to
prepare young women and men for our time — a time when it seems that information is being
generated far faster than we can absorb it,” the president said. “That is why we
are so happy to have the F.W. Olin Center with us. Filled with sophisticated tools of
teaching and learning, it helps restore the balance between information generation and
information acquisition.”

The president noted that Winston Churchill had said, “We shape our buildings, and
afterwards our buildings shape us.”

“We have shaped the F.W. Olin Center and have added spectacular strengths to our
campus,” he said. “I, for one, look forward to discovering how this building
will shape us.”

The F.W. Olin Center was made possible by a $9 million gift from the F.W. Olin
Foundation, Inc., of New York City. Established in 1938 by Franklin W. Olin, engineer and
industrialist, the foundation has followed the practice of making grants to independent
colleges and universities for the total cost of new academic buildings and libraries. Its
unusual approach to philanthropy has earned the foundation a reputation for maintaining
one of the most selective grant programs in America. Foundation support has added
seventy-two buildings, with nearly four million square feet of academic space, to
fifty-seven colleges and universities.

Lawrence W. Milas, president of the foundation, said that he and other representatives
of the foundation “are truly pleased with what we see. This has to be one of the most
beautiful buildings the foundation has built.”

Milas said that the dedication was also a celebration of higher education and, in
particular, independent colleges like Union.

“I believe private colleges set the standard in America, and public institutions
have to measure up,” he said. “For independent colleges like Union to thrive
takes a dream and a mission and lots of dollars from lots of people who believe in
education. I hope the F.W. Olin Center will always be seen as both a symbol of
extraordinary philanthropy and a reminder of the responsibility we all have to support
education.”

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