Posted on Mar 1, 1995

The College turned to the courts in January to resolve a long-standing disagreement about using its properties in the city of Schenectady's GE Realty Plot.

In papers filed with Schenectady County Supreme Court, the College asked the court to declare unconstitutional the City Council ordinance that prevents Union from using property it owns in furtherance of its educational mission.

President Roger H. Hull, announcing the College's action, said, “Before 1978, the College had the right to use its property for educational purposes. The College retained that right when the city created the GE Realty Plot Historic District in 1978.

“However, in 1984, the city took away the College's right to use its properties when it eliminated most special uses within the area,” he continued. “We feel this taking was discriminatory, and we are convinced that the city's 1984 zoning ordinance is unconstitutional.”

The College can only speculate as to the reasons the zoning amendment was adopted, Hull said. Special uses for schools and churches are allowed in the city's two other historic districts and there already are numerous uses in the GE Realty Plot other than
single family residences, including commercial activities, a school, and a church.

“We believe it is significant that the city's Records Department has refused to honor our Freedom of Information request to obtain the public documents relative to the amendment, in direct violation of the law,” he said.

Union is not asking to be excluded from any reasonable zoning requirements, the president said. “At the same time, we believe we should have the right-as any property owner
would to take our proposal to the Zoning Board of Appeals. Under the present legislation, we don't have that right.”

Hull said that Union's inability to use its Lenox Road properties costs the College approximately $500,000 a year
in lost revenue because it cannot house additional students on campus. “At a time of great financial pressures on all colleges, it is essential that we seek to maximize our revenues,” he said.

The College noted that both the constitution and the laws of New York, as interpreted by judicial decisions, give educational institutions a special status in relation to the enforceability of municipal zoning ordinances. In 1986, the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled in cases involving Cornell University and Sarah Lawrence College that educational institutions are an inherent benefit to the community and must be entitled to file for a special use permit in a residential neighborhood.

On October 6, Hull wrote to the City Council, repeating the College's request that the city recognize the College's constitutional right as an educational institution to apply for a special use permit. The College had received no formal response from the city when it filed its suit. The College's petition remains before the City Council.

Since 1991, Hull and other Union officials met on seven separate occasions with residents of the GE Plot in an effort to resolve the matter amicably. Representatives of the Plot Association rejected all efforts at compromise and only expressed interest in “the College selling its properties and getting out of the neighborhood entirely.”

The College offered a number of compromises:

• to sell (which it did) one of the homes it owned on Wendell Avenue in the GE Plot; 
• to restrict the uses to which it would put the Lenox Road properties to administrative and faculty offices; 
• to ensure that the use of the properties would not have a negative impact on the city's finances (Union pays $37,500 a year in property taxes; water and sewer charges for the entire campus are $101,000 a year); 
• to maintain the exterior of the homes as they are now except for the addition of handicapped access; and 
• to sell all other properties it owns in the GE Plot, keeping only the Lenox Road properties and not to acquire any additional properties for a period of time to be determined by mutual consent.

With the filing of its suit, the College withdrew the proposed compromises.

The College also withdrew the Environmental Impact Statement it had prepared. Hull said that until the constitutionality of the zoning ordinance is decided, there is no reason to consider the impact statement.

The Lenox Road properties are located adjacent to the College campus. Four of the properties have houses used as residences by faculty, staff, or guests; one house is vacant; and three properties are vacant lots.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

Died: Daniel Robbins, the May I. Baker Professor of Visual Arts, died January 14. He was sixty-two.

Robbins, a distinguished art historian, devoted much of his career to the theoretical and philosophical origins of Cubism. He wrote extensively on the work of Albert Gleizes, Jacques Villon, Joachim Torres-Garcia, and Jean Metzinger. He also served as curator for numerous exhibitions and museums.

A graduate of the University of Chicago, he earned his master's degree from Yale University and his Ph.D. from New York University. He joined the College in 1980, having taught at Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Williams, and Brown.

Robbins held positions at the Fogg Museum, the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design, and was instrumental in the formation of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, where he served as a trustee. He was also a trustee of the American Federation of Arts in Boston and the
Federation Albert Gleizes in Paris. He was the author of a history of the Vermont State House
in Montpelier and participated in its restoration.

In 1959 he received a Fulbright Fellowship to the Institute of Art and Archaeology at the University of Paris. Other honors included a National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Council on Learned Societies grant.

Survivors include his wife, Eugenia Scandrett Robbins, and two daughters, Juliette and Miranda. Memorial contributions may be made to the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center's Hematology and Oncology section in Lebanon, N.H.

Died: Harold E. Way, the Frank and Marie Louise Bailey Professor of Physics Emeritus, died January 18 in East Lansing, Mich., where he lived. He was ninety.

Born in Colchester, Ill., Mr. Way graduated from Knox College and received his master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his doctorate from the University of Iowa.

He was a professor of physics at Knox College from 1927 to 1948 and was acting president in 1946. He joined the Union faculty in 1948 and later served as chairman of the Physics Department and dean of the Science and Engineering Division. In 1962, while on sabbatical, he was the head of the Institute Section of the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C.

He retired in 1966.

Survivors include his wife, Fern Robbins Way; a son, John; two daughters, Mary Ann Lauder and Jane Ellen Way; twelve grandchildren; and eleven great-grandchildren. Memorial contributions may be made to Union, Knox College, or the Congregational Summer Assembly in Frankfort, Mich.

Named: Dwight Wolf, registrar and director of academic services, has been named associate dean for academic services and planning.
Penelope Adey, associate registrar for graduate and continuing studies, is the College's new registrar. The appointments are effective July 1.
Dan Lundquist has had his title changed to vice president of admissions and financial aid.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

1813: The central “round building”
appears in Joseph Jacques Ramee's plans for the new Union campus on Nistiquona Hill outside Schenectady.

1856: College Treasurer Jonathan Pearson, commenting on President Eliphalet Nott's attempts to raise money from alumni for the building, writes, “It is certainly singular that among the great number of sons a paltry $10,000 cannot be raised for so necessary a purpose.”

1858: Forty-five years after the first hole was dug in the middle of the campus, construction begins in earnest when President Nott places the cornerstone on July 28.

1859: Lack of funds halts construction in October.

1869: Students stage a mock burial of the trustees over their failure to continue construction.

1872: Construction resumes.

1877: Impatient alumni hold a banquet in the unfinished building during Commencement.

1879: Construction is officially completed, although the “finished” Memorial Hall has no heating system and no plumbing facilities.

1902: Andrew Carnegie pledges $40,000 to repair and restore the building; install a copper drum around the base of the dome; complete the stonework; add electric lighting, plumbing, and toilets; and install steam heat.

1903: °The library moves in.

1904: On the centennial of Nott's inauguration, the College formally names and dedicates the building in his honor.

1927: Librarian Wharton Miller reports that the Nott is full and there is no room for any more books.

1930: A new library is proposed.

1936: Renovations allow the library to expand into the basement.

1954: Architects propose turning the Nott into an administration building when a new library opens.

1961-63: Schaffer Library opens, and the Mountebanks and College Bookstore move into the Nott.

1971: The Alumni Council and Board of Trustees commission a “Historic Structure Report.”

1973: The report discusses the Nott's problems and proposes solutions to turn it into a functional building.

1987: The bookstore moves into the renovated College Center.

1991: President Roger Hull makes restoration of the Nott a priority.

1993: With contributions coming. from more than 2,000 alumni, efforts to raise $11 million for the Nott are successful and work begins.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

Union students of the early nineteenth century studied physics with a textbook that claimed that the moon and the sun were inhabited.

That's one of the findings of Ennis Pilcher, professor emeritus of physics, in his recently-published Early Science and the First Century of Physics at Union
College, 1795-1895.

Pilcher retired in 1986 and soon began a detailed study of how science education evolved at the College.

At the College's founding, the natural philosophy course
included all science instruction except for advanced studies in astronomy. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the course had evolved into physics after spawning separate specializations in natural history, chemistry, and civil and electrical engineering.

By the Civil War, Union led the nation in producing graduates with a breadth of technical and scientific understanding, Pilcher writes.

Edward J. Craig, professor emeritus of electrical engineering, devotes much of his new book, Electrical Engineering at Union, 1895-1995, to people-everything from anecdotes about faculty members to lists of everyone who received a degree in electrical engineering.

Perhaps the best story concerns a former chairman of the department, Harold W. Bibber. As Craig recalls, Bibber liked to emphasize in his lectures that the ratio of the line voltage to the line-to-neutral voltage in a
three-phase power system is the square root of three.

“Evidently some students, looking for a little excitement, thought that burning the symbol on his lawn would be fun,” Craig writes. They did so one night, but Bibber recognized them in the light of the flames and they had to resod his lawn.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

New members of the College's Board of Trustees are William J. Curtin `82, of Summit, NJ.; Wallace A Graham, of Schenectady; and Stephen R Karp, of Weston, Mass.

Curtin, who was elected to the board by alumni, is a managing director with Lehman Brothers in New York City. He received his B.A in economics and has worked in a number of volunteer capacities for the College.

Graham is vice chairman of the board of Schenectady International, a chemical manufacturer with worldwide sales. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, he was with IBM before joining Schenectady International (formerly Schenectady Chemicals, Inc.) in 1972.

Karp is the chief executive officer of New England Development, Inc., a commercial real estate developer that has built a number of shopping malls in the Boston area. He is a graduate of Boston University, and one of his two children is a current Union student.