For those who served.
This year we visited this Veterans’ Cemetery to pay our respects:
Panny GX7, kit zoom + umbrella.
Category Archives: Photographs
Wesleyan University
The right ‘vibe’.
For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.
Founded in 1831, Wesleyan holds 3,100 students, almost all of whom are undergraduates. Named after the English creator of Methodism, it started life as exclusively male but is now co-educational, the genders equally represented. The 360 acre campus includes over 340 buildings.
We are learning the strangest thing during our month of New England college tours and it is that the undefinable element of ‘feel’ or ‘vibe’, if you prefer, is present in abundance. And while my subjective opinions are irrelevant to my son’s eventual decision they are an important element in his deliberations. With a four year commitment the feel must be right, and we both just adored that of Wesleyan.
As luck would have it our visit today was on graduation day and even the weather cooperated. (Hint: park in the residential area on the other side of Washington Street – Route 66! Nowhere else is possible on such a day without a pass).
Though the campus houses many buildings, it manages to remain compact and accessible.
The Center for African American studies.
The Davison Health Center, curlicues and all.
The Davison Art Center. We visited a fine photography exhibition there.
Every campus has its ugly building and the Performing Arts Center bears that distinction at Wesleyan.
The Usdan Student Center.
Inside the Usdan.
Andrus Field is at campus center.
Wesleyan is making significant progress in widening the ethnicities of its student base.
In superb repair, the Memorial Chapel echoes the red and black colors of the school in its roof.
Inside the Memorial Chapel, taken in near darkness. Thank goodness for pews!
The many stained glass windows are surprisingly ornate given the relatively strict nature of the Methodist religion. This window honors those lost in WW2.
Graduation Day! The Van Vleck Observatory dates from 1914 and sees Wesleyan graduating more astronomy and astrophysics graduates than any other U.S. school.
Magnificent Romanesque architecture on the South College building.
The Davison Health Center has a lovely, light look.
Hanging out. A campus which encourages socializing.
Campus life.
The magnificent Olin Memorial Library, designed by McKim, Mead and White. The Olin Foundation seems to have donated buildings to every campus we have visited, some small compensation for the founder’s sins. John Olin was an ammunition manufacturer.
Another eyesore, the Science Library opposite the Olin.
The alumni list at Wesleyan is long and distinguished, with the college exceptionally well represented in Hollywood. Alumni include Bill Rodgers of marathon fame, Michael Bay, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bill Belichick, Robert Ludlum, Timothy Hutton and Merce Cunningham.
Three faculty members have been awarded Nobel Prizes – V. S. Naipaul, Woodrow Wilson and T. S. Eliot.
Minute Men and Concord
Early Massachusetts.
The Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Massachusetts is the location of the first battle of the colonialists against their British oppressors on April 19, 1775. The 700 British soldiers survived the sniping of the Minute Men – so named as these early American militiamen volunteered to be ready for service in one minute – staggering exhausted and shot up into Lexington in the afternoon where they were saved by 1,000 reinforcements under General Hugh, Earl Percy. A nominal victory for the colonialists and the start of hostilities.
Those seven hundred redcoats walked four abreast down this exact pathway, resplendent in their red outfits with white ‘shoot me here’ bands, convinced that their empire would last 1,000 years, like subsequent claimants to that crown. It was not to be.
Mary Hartwell was among the first to see the British from this, her home. She wrote:
Women have always been overly impressed by uniforms.
Hartwell’s warning got to Captain William Smith some 200 yards down the road, at his home:
Smith was the commander of the Lincoln militiamen and the brother of Abigail Adams, the wife of that magnificent patriot John Adams, the driving force behind America’s revolutionary fervor. Smith rode into Lincoln town center and rallied his minute company, which arrived in Concord that afternoon. The colonialists were nothing if not prepared for their fight with the mightiest army on earth.
The Park is located near the town of Concord, where we stopped for lunch. Boasting no fewer than three churches in the town center – Unitarian, Congregational and Catholic – and replete with memorials for our war dead, the town is everything you expect of an early New England settlement.
Main Street, Concord.
The Catholic church anchors Main Street.
The Unitarian Universalist church.
The Minutemen met on the morning of the revolution in this tavern in Concord’s Main Street.
Another view of Main Street. The profusion of flags announces that Memorial Day is just around the corner.
No one could accuse the American Indians of being good negotiators.
A beautiful day in New England, enjoying the history of how the greatest nation there has ever been came into existence.
Daily driver
In rural New Hampshire.
iPhone6 snap.
Trinity College
A gem in the rough.
For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.
As with all the schools we are looking at here, Trinity College In Connecticut started life as a protestant school and eventually became secular. 2,350 undergraduates call it home. Strangely, the Chapel was not built until 1932, late for this life cycle.
While the campus is self contained it is sadly surrounded by the worst imaginable neighborhoods where the locals look like so many heroin addicts. This means the only way a student would want to leave this lovely campus would be in a bus or armored car. While the surrounding area is trying to gentrify the only reasonable solution is a wrecking ball or maybe a small nuclear device. This tends to take away from the surface appeal of a college in a great city.
The original Seabury Chapel has long since been replaced. It’s boarded up and really should be torn down. It is comically small.
This is Vernon Street, the main thoroughfare through the self-contained campus.
Winston registers in the Admissions Building. Finals were two weeks ago and the campus was largely deserted.
The Trinity Chapel.
The spire of the Trinity Chapel.
While the Chapel was closed for renovations, the workers allowed us to sneak in so we could view the magnificent stained glass work.
The Long Walk, completed in 1878, is an architectural masterpiece in the Victorian Gothic style by English architect William Burges.
Another view of the Long Walk. The only example of Burges’s work in the United States, the building includes both lecture halls and student housing.
More distinguished architecture in the quad.
Centered in the large quad’s lawn, founder Bishop Thomas Church Brownell is honored.
A beautiful campus.
The architecture of the Arts Center is an acquired taste.
The Gross Music Center.
Distinguished Trinity College alumni include George Will, Edward Albee and Nicholas Monsarrat.
A reader writes, July 15, 2017:
Thank you for your informative blog on Northeastern colleges. I want to make one important correction from your photo tour of Trinity College:
The small “castle†that you called “Seabury Chapel” in your pix is nothing of the sort. It’s a fraternity house called St. Anthony Hall. Also, note that the windows are currently being restored. It was built in 1878, the same year as the Long Walk. It was built as a fraternity house, so it has never been owned by the College. That land isn’t even owned by the College.
The original site of the chapel is on the Long Walk in the building still named “Seabury.†Today, it’s a large classroom.
Hope this helps.
Best,
Douglas Kim ‘87
Vice-President of the Class of 1987
Member, St. Anthony Hall