This year the College notes the 125th anniversary of the Idol at Union and the 75th birthday of Memorial Chapel. Wayne Somers '62 provides the following background.
The Idol
A Chinese stone lion perhaps dating from the fifteenth century, the Idol was unearthed near Shanghai in the mid-nineteenth century and sent to Union in 1875 by the Rev. John Farnham, Class of 1856. As the donor explained, “These stone images are often seen on each side of the entrance of a mandarin's office. They are also found in front of old grave mounds with those of priests, horses, and other animals, guarding the approach to graves of distinguished persons. [Union's] had been used for this purpose and was found deeply buried in the ground.”
When the 4,900-pound gift arrived at Union about March 1875, it was stored in its crate in the college barn for about a year. News in the spring of 1876 that the donor was planning to visit the campus prompted the College to situate the statue in back of the President's House.
Carved from gray rock, the Idol has a lion's body and a human (or at least a non-leonine) head. The lion is presumed to be female because she formerly had a cub between her legs; the cub played with a ball. Vandals removed both cub and ball in 1921.
From the time it was set up, the Idol has been painted and otherwise abused by students on thousands of occasions. The first painting occurred the night after the statue was set up. The act was regarded as serious vandalism, and a professor of chemistry was consulted about getting the paint off. Ritual painting (as distinct from painting as a lark) began in the late nineteenth century as “Idol worship,” in which sophomores forced freshmen to worship the Idol and paint it with their hands. Regularly from around 1910 until 1932, and irregularly thereafter, the two classes fought in the spring and fall to have the Idol wear the paint of their class color. Unorganized painting of the Idol has continued to the present.
Through at least the 1920s, it was unusual for the Idol to be painted any color but red or green, the freshman and sophomore class colors. In 1928, someone caused consternation by using blue paint. When, after a hiatus of several years, an attempt was made to revive the regular paint fights in 1936, students no longer knew what their class colors were, and to the dismay of the keepers of traditions, someone painted the Idol yellow. During a 1990 campus measles epidemic, one dawn found the Idol spotted.
From time to time the Idol has been the victim of more than cosmetic abuse. It was tipped over in 1935, 1941, and 1947 (and probably several other times), and burned in 1938 and 194 1. Burning became a regular part of the class fights for a while after the Second World War, and recurred as recently as 1985. In the fall of 1964, the Idol was tarred and feathered by Phi Gamma Delta.
More serious vandalism has usually been attributed to raiders from RPI, though probably not always correctly. After the right leg was broken off in the fall of 1919, and “R.P.I.” carved on the Idol, Union severed athletic relations with the Troy college. In the fall of 1921, part of the left leg and of the cub were broken off; they were repaired with concrete. Sledge hammer-wielding vandals broke the Idol into several pieces in the summer of 1985.
In 1942, the Class of 1894 offered to have the Idol restored and a new cub and ball made, and others proposed that the Idol be moved to a safer place, such as the central entrance of Washburn Hall, or the lobby of the Carnegie Building. But when President Fox polled the alumni through the Union Alumni Review, he found little support for taking the Idol into protective custody; in the meantime, considerable opposition developed among students and faculty.
No other college is known to have an Idol, though two slightly smaller but otherwise similar stone lions are said to have been at the now-defunct China Trade Museum in Milton, Mass.
The Idol has changed location five times. It remained behind the President's House until the summer of 1879, when it was put it in a less conspicuous place — atop a knoll on what was then the eastern edge of the active campus (the front door of Schaffer Library is near the location.) The Idol remained there for thirty-three years, with Washburn Hall built in front of it. In December 1913, it was moved east to a position about seventy-five feet from the recently constructed Alumni Gymnasium and a few yards south of the Class of 1863 Elm. After curbing was constructed on East Lane in the summer of 1930, fear that combatants might trip in the heat of the paint fights resulted in another shift, that September, about sixty feet west. In June 1985, construction of the addition to Alumni Gymnasium necessitated the move to west of the Science and Engineering Center. In 1996, to make way for the F.W. Olin Center, the Idol was moved to its present location on a small plateau between Achilles Rink and Bailey Field.
Memorial Chapel
Built in 1925 as a chapel and meeting hall to replace Old Chapel, Memorial Chapel honored Union men killed in all wars up to that time. Until the Humanities Building opened in 1967, it also housed the offices of the music faculty.
President Charles Alexander Richmond, a clergyman accustomed to preaching in a proper church, had long wanted to build a chapel at Union, but the need for other buildings — the General Engineering Building (19 10), the Alumni Gymnasium (1914), and Butterfield Hall (1918) — was more pressing. Finally, in 1919, a fundraising campaign began, and donations were solicited from Schenectady residents with the promise that many events in the building would be open to the public.
Built by Hanrahan Brothers of Schenectady at a total cost of about $226,000, Memorial Chapel was designed by Lawrence Grant White of McKim, Mead and White (reputedly the first major building he designed on his own). The organ was made by Casavant Freres; the chimes in the tower by Meenely and Co. The land on which it was erected had been marsh as recently as 1907. Ground was broken March 27, 1924, the cornerstone was laid June 8, 1924, and the building was dedicated October 25, 1925.
The “memorial” aspect of the chapel has been the subject of confusion from the beginning. Although built soon after the end of the First World War, the chapel was never intended to commemorate exclusively the Union men who died in that war. During the fundraising period, the chapel was described in the Concordiensis, perhaps with authority, as an intended memorial to the approximately 2,000 Union men who had served in all wars. But when the building was finished President Richmond dedicated it to the memory of Union men who died in all wars (the War of 1812, the Mexican War of 1846, the Civil War, the Spanish American War in 1898, and the First World War). However, only the names of the twenty-six Union alumni who died in the First World War were inscribed on the south wall at the rear of the chancel.
When opened, the building contained several other separate memorials and gifts: The chancel (memorial to the Rev. John D. Wells '38), the chairs in the chancel (William S. Cassedy '91), the reading desk (Gaylord Judd Clarke '59), the pulpit (Rev. Herman Vedder, class of 1799; Barent A. Mynderse '49; and Herman Vedder Mynderse '84), the endowment for the pulpit (Rev. Thomas Lamont '56), the bronze lights at the entrance (gift of Edwin Wilbur Rice '54), the clock in the tower (gift of Edwin Wilbur Rice, Jr.), the chimes (gift of the Class of 1922), and the large Bible (gift of Rev. George H. Kling, '24). A few of the window panes were of floated glass which had survived from the early days of North and South College dormitories.
After the Second World War, a memorial table presented by the Board of Trustees to commemorate the Union men who died in that war was placed beneath the First World War necrology on February 19, 1947. The presidential portraits then owned (Smith, Edwards, Nott, Hickok, and Raymond) were moved from Old Chapel to Memorial Chapel in early 1926. Others were added later, and those of the missing presidents joined the collection through the efforts of Samuel Fortenbaugh, a former chairman of the Board of Trustees.
The ambiguous status of the chapel has led to occasional controversy. A student jazz band played there May 19, 1948, and on April 28, 1952; in the spring of 1958, however, President Carter Davidson threatened to ban future jazz concerts in the chapel because of the smoking and drinking associated with them. In October 1965, Norman Johnson, chairman of the Committee on Religious Life, denied the sophomore class permission to have a rock and roll concert in the chapel on the ground that such a performance did not represent “the standards of the college.” He was overruled the next week by the full committee, but there was continued concern about physical damage and trash. Concerts of all kinds, however, continued to be held in Memorial Chapel until at least the fall of 1980 (and in the fall of 1974, as part of a concert by a Union group called “Chet Arthur and the Flaming Aces,” one of the performers drove a motorcycle down the center aisle). By the fall of 1982, “hard rock” concerts were banned in Memorial Chapel.
Political uses have also aroused concern: in 1948 the trustees went on record as opposing the Chapel's use by political parties, but this regulation proved impractical.
In winter 1967-68, some of the front pews were removed, and an apron extended into the main body of the chapel so that symphony orchestras could be accommodated without constructing temporary stages. At the same time, the organ and the pulpit were made portable, and a screen was placed in front of the necrology on the south wall. The screen was removed in the early 1990s, and in 1995, the chapel was thoroughly refurbished for the Bicentennial.