Bowdoin Beata – Part IV

Bowdoin College, c.1907.

Hubbard Hall and Walker Art Building, Bowdoin College, c.1910.

The turn of the 20th century saw Bowdoin College welcoming new, untested architectural styles to its campus, in an attempt to transition itself away from its image of a small college with a chapel, tucked away in a corner of a small college town, to the appearance of a prominent academic institution with appropriately ceremonial buildings to publicly display that status. Memorial Hall's grandiloquent Gothic presence was a good start (see my last post), but now it was time for more architectural symbols of scholastic and artistic excellence in the arts and sciences to round out the Bowdoin Quadrangle.

Searles' solemnity

The Mary Frances Searles Science Building (1894) had a bad rap on campus. Legend had it that the descendants of its namesake were out to build "the ugliest building possible" because they'd been cut out of her late husband's will when his money was left to build it. Though I wasn't much for its purplish paint job – wondering what that covered up – it was one of those buildings I found myself stopping and staring at. 

Which is a litmus test for great architecture: the extent to which it makes you stop and stare, and for how long. (No wonder I kept ignoring the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library.) And why was Searles worth a special look? It had the majestic presence of an old English or Danish castle, of the kind Hamlet would home in – owing in part to the predilections of its architect, Henry Vaughan, a Brit by birth, for Elizabethan and Jacobean (known as "Jacobethan" in combo) stylistic elements in his designs. 

East Boston High School (1926, John M. Gray Company). Photo by Antony.22.

It also brought to my mind those Gothic and Jacobethan schools and colleges in New York I fondly remembered –  Erasmus Hall High School, Flushing High School, City College of New York, many others – as well as the welcoming octagonal twin turret-towers flanking the entrance of East Boston High School. In short, Searles' style said two things: scholarship and showmanship.

Mary Frances Searles Science Building (1894). Photo by Dirk Ingo Franke.

Which were part of the building's intent: to unify the Biology, Chemistry and Physics Departments under one roof that promoted their academic reputation through a regal design of high Dutch gables, octagonal crenellated turrets, domed lance-like towers flanking the entrance, oriel bay windows, Amherst sandstone trim and finials, and a crowning classical cupola, all reflecting the repute of the likes of Oxford and Cambridge.

The Maine Street elevation of Searles takes the form of a pair of identical gabled rear ells enclosing a courtyard on three sides. Vaughan designed it just so to allow the laboratory-lecture halls in the ells as much daylight as possible, picking up on the natural illumination architecture for scientific classrooms and labs established by Seth Adams Hall in 1861 (see my previous post). This courtyard also came in handy for Searles' 1999 renovation and expansion by Cambridge Seven Associates, who filled it in with a 2,000-square-foot granite/glass atrium, a sequence of ramps interconnecting all floors, interdisciplinary communal rooms, and cutting-edge computer/audiovisual high-tech, to bring Searles into the 21st century.

Searles was yet another demonstration of Bowdoin's foresight in the architectural planning of all its buildings, making them just as useful with every passing age, up to and including our IT/AI age.

Sadly, I have no Searles memories to share, never having passed through its doors. I never studied science at Bowdoin, no thanks to its lack of course distribution requirements, which would have given us a well-rounded curriculum by which we would have discovered new interests that opened doors to fulfilling careers.

Thankfully, distribution requirements were restored at Bowdoin, thanks (real thanks) to Prof. Barbara Kaster, who once declared in class, "You folks are being shortchanged by having no distribution requirements!" and set out with her initiative to bring them back, thus benefiting Bowdoiners from Gens X, Y and Z.

Walker's wonders

The Walker Art Building (1897) accomplished for Bowdoin's art collection and curriculum what Searles did for its scientific studies, this time in the form of a classical temple that completed the Bowdoin Quadrangle's eastern parameter with a monumental miniature of some of America's great art museums, from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts to the one just down the road in Portland.

To be continued...

Bowdoin Beata – Part III

In 1802, Massachusetts Hall laid the architectural cornerstone for the buildout of Bowdoin College, establishing the red brick construction and Federal/Classical design patterns that would define the development of the campus into the mid-20th century. In 1855, the Chapel was consecrated, giving Bowdoin its definining icon, music sanctuary, time-reminding school bells, budding art gallery and library, and design direction into the turn of the century.

Now I'd like to explore the college buildings the Chapel established a hankering for in the Victorian era, and the Gothic, Neoclassical and Jacobean styles they assumed as a rich variety of newer, grander architectural forms changed the campus character, fulfilling new functions for the broadening diversity of academic interests of the next generations of students.

Adams' abundance

Seth Adams Hall (1861) was built for Bowdoin's Medical School of Maine, the state's first medical college, for which the high ceilings, vast floor areas, and tall windows brought light, space, and vapor-dispersing atmosphere to the school's laboratories, dissections, and medical/surgical instruction.

Seth Adams Hall (1861), Bowdoin College, c.1890.

These features, coupled with the compatibility of its vertical red-brick Italianate Gothic style to Bowdoin's red-brick dorms and the rise of the Chapel, made it made-to-order for some of the college's bigger classes, such as my 52-strong Sociology 1 my freshman year, where I'd feel lost in a sea of students unless I sat way up front, which I always did (though I rarely spoke). 

Today Seth Adams Hall houses the Sociology and Anthropology Departments, and was one of the first campus buildings to receive a down-to-the-studs green renovation following the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) guidelines. Kudos to the architectural prestidigitation of Harriman of Maine, Seth Adams Hall has a healthier indoor environment than it did in its heyday, bike racks encourage a pollution-free commute to class, low-flow plumbing with user sensors and innovative wastewater technology reduces water usage by as much as 50%, and energy-efficient lighting and HVAC systems make the indoor environment even healthier. Seth Adams Hall was already a milestone of sustainability with its unusually tall windows letting in more natural sunlight, and it has now gone all the way in its initial design goals.

Memorial's memories

Memorial Hall (1882), no doubt inspired by the Chapel's Gothic soar, granite structure and space-use versatility, underwent a major transformation from a somber war memorial into a dynamic magnet for student and faculty attraction from all nooks, crannies and corners of the campus to a smorgasbord of sparkling spectacles inside. Samuel D. Backus and William Gibbons Preston designed it as a Gothic granite memorial to Bowdoin's 359 Civil War veterans, most notably Brig. Gen. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Class of 1852, who commanded the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry at Gettysburg (holding Little Round Top) and accepted the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantry, and later served as President of Bowdoin College.

Memorial Hall was renovated in 1955 by McKim, Mead & White into the 600-seat Pickard Theatre, opening it up to stage stellar productions by Bowdoin's Masque & Gown theater troupe and the Brunswick Summer Playhouse; vibrant dance performances under the founding choreographic hand of June Adler Vail; the Kenneth V. Santagata Memorial Lecture Series, bringing international speakers of fame and renown to communicate daring, unorthodox perspectives in the arts, humanities, and social sciences to open-minded students; the Bowdoin Film Society's annual Oscar-caliber presentation of the student films generated in Prof. Barbara Kaster's "Flicks" class, and so much more.

Memorable Memorial moments for me were many. I kicked off my first two Bowdoin years by attending Brunswick Summer Playhouse performances of the classic Stephen Schwartz musicals Godspell and Pippin, leaving the theater with a reduced appreciation of the former and a heightened regard of the latter. 

I found Godspell too silly, childish and clichéd for my maturing tastes, and I found myself enjoying Pippin more, because it was better staged than the direct-from-Broadway production I'd seen in Boston and disliked intensely, mainly because my father never once applauded throughout it and, after the final curtain call, declared it "a complete dud." Of course, now that I was leaving home and going away to college, I was developing a clean slate and a fresh formation of my own viewpoints, with passionate influence from two female students who persuaded me to appreciate Pippin's philosophical message about finding one's own meaning, identity, and peace of mind, accepting and appreciating the ordinary, and not chasing rainbows in the distance to "find my corner of the sky," as the lead character sang. Good counsel.

Other Pickard perks for me included attending an electrifying Masque & Gown performance of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Flies, an existentialist retake on Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripedes' myth of Electra and Orestes' quest to avenge the death of their father Agamemnon, King of Argos, by killing their mother Clytemnestra and her husband Aegisthus. (The bearded, portly Zeus actor was despotically godly and very commanding on stage, though I heard he forgot his lines in one performance. So much for godly.) I also remember a production of Tom Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth, a duet of plays exploring interpersonal misunderstanding and miscommunication through marked, and sometimes deliberate, differences in language and expression. Masque & Gown musical productions I saw at Pickard were The Pajama Game, with an expert rendition of "Steam Heat" by future writer Sue Abbattista, and Once Upon a Mattress, where the Sir Harry actor gave me an idea of how I ought to have played the part in my Park School production of it: like a comical stuffed shirt, not the serious stiff nerd I had been. 

Tom Stoppard (1937-2025), c.1985.

A Santagata lecture on "The Event and the Text" brought British playwright Tom Stoppard all the way from England to discuss his philosophical insights into society's linguistic, metaphysical and existential foundations. (Along with The Flies, I had studied a work by Stoppard in Prof. Victor L. Cahn's "The Theatre of the Absurd" course my freshman year. The play was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a meditation on determinism and the playing of predetermined roles vs. free will and the freedom to choose one's own path, using two minor characters from Hamlet – Hamlet's university classmates, whom he orders executed in his place as his "whipping boys" – and their actual scenes from Shakespeare's play. Cahn, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Stoppard, later published as Beyond Absurdity, remains my favorite Bowdoin professor.)

But my Pickard peak-experience was accepting the Bowdoin Film Society Award for Best Dramatic Film for my "Flicks" creation, a black-and-white Super-8 short about a shy student who has a crush on a girl who hangs out with more social, clowning students – an autobiographical replay of an actual fraternity experience. (The people I based my film on came – in fact, were invited – to a party scene I was shooting. All of them showed up in the film, they found out my ulterior motive in making it, and one of them threatened legal action.)

But I digress...

Wish Theatre (2000), Memorial Hall (1882). Photo: brsidders, Wikimedia Commons.

Memorial Hall's second major makeover was its extension into Wish Theatre in 2000. It is a flexible, open-concept 150-seat experimental performance space, made possible by a substantial gift from Barry N. Wish '63 and Oblio Wish, for Bowdoin's expanding Theatre Arts Major.

And what progress from my Bowdoin years, when its theatrical offerings were limited – very limited – to Masque & Gown; their sole director, Ray Rutan '51; his few courses on "the fundamentals" of acting, directing, and playwriting; and the Bowdoin Orient's acerbic theater critic, Marc Silverstein, who trashed virtually every one of Rutan's productions with the vitriol of John Simon of New York magazine and Kevin Kelly of The Boston Globe, making Ray look like an incompetent amateur. Poor guy.

Wish is a captivating compromise between the modernism there was no turning back from and the historicism Bowdoin is rooted in. It presents a dance of a peaked tower with a skybridge to the old building, a hip-roofed pavilion with Italianate brackets and lace-collar trim, and a  cupola-crowned kiosk, all in step with Memorial Hall's Gothic arches and Mansard roof as a theatrical extravaganza that tempts us inside to experience theater, dance, lectures and flicks as we wish they could be.

Seth Adams Hall and Memorial Hall are further examples of Bowdoin buildings planned with foresight, so they could be structurally and spatially adaptable to future social and academic requirements, just as Massachusetts Hall's hipped roof and deep footprint and the Chapel's roomy wings were (see my previous post for details).

To be continued...

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Bowdoin Beata – Part II

Photo courtesy of the Maine Historical Society. 

When bright skies were o'er us,

And life lay before us,

'Neath Bowdoin's pines we gathered far and near.

So filling our glasses,

And greeting all classes,

We drink a health to alma mater dear.

So it's clink, clink, drink, drink, drink!

Smash the glass to splinters when you're done.

O Bowdoin Beata,

Our dear alma mater,

There is no fairer mother 'neath the sun.

(Words by Henry H. Pierce, Class of 1896; revised by Anthony Antolini '63, Director of Bowdoin Chorus Emeritus) 

Photo by Michelle Stapleton.

My dear alma mater's song captured the polarity of the Bowdoin College experience: the high academic standards of its curriculum vs. the high living that came with the territory of its formerly fraternal social life, in the form of alcohol, drugs, horseplay, and heaven knows what else. 

In my previous Bowdoin Beata post I explored the latter situation, and how the fraternity houses moved on from it when they became the College Houses, which revealed their fine architecture as a framework for the intellectual, social and cultural communities I wish had been available to me when I was there.

But now I'd like to focus on my favorite academic buildings at Bowdoin, those that have formed and shaped the college's scholastic identity as I remember it.

Massachusetts' modesty

Massachusetts Hall (1802), Bowdoin's oldest, was built soon after the college was chartered by the Massachusetts State Legislature (remember, Maine was part of Massachusetts then) in 1794, from a Federal design by Aaron & Samuel Melcher III. And it says "Massachusetts" all over, recalling contemporary works of Charles Bulfinch in Boston and Samuel McIntyre in Salem.

This style speaks through its symmetrical façade and chimneys, narrow center entrance with fanlight transom and cornice, hipped roof, simple interior paneling, and the mahogany-railed staircase that curves up to professors' offices and the top-level floor-through classroom. All these elements present the hall in a unified form to the Bowdoin Quad.

Massachusetts Hall, Bowdoin College, in 1884. Photo by Amos O. Reed.

This modest unity of minimal detail and maximal cohesion was also an outgrowth of the financial constraints affecting Bowdoin's development, including rising real estate values. So it was decided to start the campus small, hence Massachusetts Hall's modest, diminished, lowly stature, well atoned for by architectural foresight and planning.

As a result, its small size didn't stop it from supplying multiple faculty offices, including the English and Philosophy departments (until the latter relocated to the Edward Pols House on 5 Bath Road), the Faculty Room, the McKeen Study, and a sizable floor-through top-floor classroom (which barely fit me and the overflow of 30 students in Prof. Geoghegan's Religion 32), which the Hall's high hipped roof and square footprint – almost as deep as it was wide – made possible.

Residential row

Bowdoin College c.1823. Artwork by John G. Brown.

Massachusetts Hall, in a way, spurned the development of the four brick dormitories that were to shape the beginnings of the Bowdoin Quadrangle, by virtue of establishing brick as the building material, rehiring the Hall's architect to design the first dorm, and lining them up along the new campus's western parameter so they would fully border the Quad by the time the last one, Hyde Hall, was built.

Winthrop Hall (1822, Samuel Melcher III), c.1925.

Winthrop Hall (1822) was Samuel Melcher III's follow-up building, and the first of four brick dormitories that formed the western parameter of the Bowdoin Quadrangle, setting it up for future campus development with a "Harvard Yard" appeal. Establishing the standard for Bowdoin's dormitory superblocks followed through the 1950s, Winthrop repeats Massachusetts Hall's narrow center entrance with fanlight transom, but breaks from it with tripartite central windows –  portending the 20th-century modernism of "Chicago" windows – and, of course, an added story and a larger footprint for the growing student population.

Note how, by lining up regimentally along the Quad's western parameter, the "street wall" of Winthrop Hall and the subsequent dorms inspired a path along the Quad, confirming its intimate rectangular form. 

Maine Hall (1837), designed by Anthony Coombs Raymond, follows Winthrop's standard with nearly identical brick façades and tripartite windows. The arched entrances are a bit wider and more deeply recessed into the façades, perhaps to allow freer inward and outward passage to more students at once, and to grant them pre-entry and pre-exit shelter from the elements.

Maine Hall repeated the pattern of stylistic uniformity in dormitory design that Harvard Yard established when Bulfinch's Stoughton Hall (1805) was built as a near-replication of Hollis Hall (1762). This turned Bowdoin into sort of a "little Harvard," which was of great appeal to me when I was visiting Bowdoin for my application interview (since my dad wished I would go to Harvard).

Appleton Hall (1843) was designed by Samuel Melcher & Sons, who followed in their father's footsteps with the dormitory template set by Winthrop Hall, but with variations according to the shift to the Greek Revival: A squared center entrance with higher stoop, flat lintel and broad keystone underscores the tripartite windows, giving the entry a sense of verticality.

Hyde Hall (1917), designed by Allen & Collens (best known for New York's Riverside Church and Union Theological Seminary), is one of three dorms that stretch the Winthrop Hall prototype of 1822 way into the 20th century, the others being McKim, Mead & White's Moore Hall (1941, my freshman dorm) and Coleman Hall (1958). The visible changes in the elevations, heights, chimney placements, entrances, stair-hall windows and cosmetics from one dorm to another as the years progressed showcase a pattern of architectonic adjustment according to the changing needs of new generations of students, the growth of the college and its student body, and the advancement of structural engineering and material manufacturing throughout those years.

Hyde Hall picked up its predecessors' brick facing, center entrance, central tripartite windows and punched rhythm of fenestration, but elongated its front door and one of its tripartite windows, to express and shed light on the upward mobility of the stairwell, which the lowering of one window and the elongation of another clearly expresses as a separate entity from the living quarters. Hyde's basement windows signify the increasing use of basements for practical purposes, such as more advanced plumbing, laundry, gas and electrical facilities. Moore and Coleman moved their entrances from the ends to the sides, allowing for four entries for busy student traffic, with taller stairwell windows above them for more ease of finding one's way to one's room after pulling an all-nighter, getting drunk, or partying the night away (below).

Moore Hall (1941, McKim, Mead & White).

Coleman Hall (1958, McKim, Mead & White).

Chapel's chimes

Bowdoin College Chapel (1855, Richard Upjohn). Photo by Andrew Mass.

Photo by William Morgan.

The Chapel (1855), which completes the western border of the Bowdoin Quadrangle as a cynosure of the campus, is the college's principal landmark, the one that immediately defines its scholastic identity, in many ways: with its twin towers visible from afar, chiming their Westminster Chime on the quarter-hour to remind students, faculty and staff of their obligations and deadlines; with its axial symmetry on its footpath, which served as a compass for future campus development; with its colorful interior and resonant acoustics and organs, serving as Bowdoin's central venue for concerts, recitals, Chapel Talks and lectures; and with the myriad of other ways it has served the college and its community over the years, kudos to its versatile wings. 

"Brunswick College Chapel, Brunswick, Me.", rendering by Richard Upjohn, 1845.

Designed by Richard Upjohn, famous for Trinity Church in New York (1846) and the First Parish Church in Brunswick (1846), the Chapel demonstrates, in stature, structure and use, how everlasting the Gothic Revival can be (even with the phase-out of compulsory religious services at Bowdoin in the 1960s), kudos to the same architectural foresight that went into Massachusetts Hall.

With this foresight, the Chapel was planned for mixed uses from the beginning: a central hall for worship and music, a library, and an art gallery. The German Romanesque random-ashlar Brunswick granite shell was given a tripartite scheme that included library and gallery wings.

The Chapel interior is a wonderworld of stained glass, hammerbeam roof rafters, black walnut woodwork, colorful fresoes, two organs (front and rear), and resonant acoustics. This has made it a blessed space for Chamber Choir concerts – I fondly remember singing solos in a Mozart mass and a "new song contest," and the song with my solo was the winner: "Susie Asado," James Sellars' adaptation of a poem by Gertrude Stein. Other fond Chapel memories were Sunday afternoon Chapel Talks, which enabled students and faculty to soapbox their views on a myriad of issues and arguments of mixed merit. An unconvincing one was "The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Fact or Fiction?", in which a Bowdoin Christian Fellowship member used semantics and bombast rather than logic, evidence and deduction to argue for Jesus' ascension: 

"This brilliant scholar says that there is overwhelming evidence that the Resurrection really occurred... The results [of his research] stunned him." The student also described the process of death by asphyxiation on the cross and the secure guarding of tombs back then. That was reasonable logic to show the impossibilities of survival of crucifixion and of grave robbery (more logical reasons for the disappearance of Jesus' body), but not to show that the story of Jesus was true. Yes, faith triumphed over reason.

And, oh, the way the sunlight penetrated the stained-glass windows and spotlighted the frescoes, bringing out their rich colors and delicate artistry! Upjohn likely calculated the window placements for the right impacts of light at certain positions of the sun – still more foresight.

He also must have calculated the siting of the sharp-pointed bell towers according to when and how the sun would hit them at various solar positions of the diurnal arc. Which made the towers a handy "sundial" for Bowdoiners: bright towers meant rise and shine (and get to class), and red-orange towers meant bedtime was nigh (unless you were pulling an all-nighter).

The east end of the Chapel's south wing, Banister Hall, originally housed a two-level art gallery, displaying sculptures on its lower floor and paintings upstairs. This was the extent of the college's "art museum" – in rather cramped quarters – until the fine artworks found brighter, roomier breathing space and elbow-room in the Walker Art Building across the Quad in 1894. Banister Hall then housed the Department of Music (which was handy for Chapel concerts and recitals next door) and the Department of Psychology, until they too found new homes, in the Harvey Dow Gibson Hall of Music in 1954 and eventually Kanbar Hall in 2004, respectively. 

Today Banister Hall houses the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good, a community service and civic engagement center, and the THRIVE program, supporting first-generation and limited-income students in transitioning into and on from the college experience, and to give them a sense of belonging. (THRIVE was made possible by a major grant from Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings '83.) Very worthy new uses for the spiritual community center the Chapel was built to be!

The library in the opposite wing, despite its beautiful arch, column, bracket and drip moldings and dark walnut woodwork, had but limited capacity for Bowdoin's ever-growing book collection, as the overflowing shelves show here. The completion of Hubbard Hall in 1903 was the answer to the library's prayers.

But in time even Hubbard Hall (center) burst at the seams with books, as the evolution of knowledge dictated, until the functional but drab Hawthorne-Longfellow Library (bottom left), designed by Steinman, Cain & White, assumed the book-burden in 1965, with a much-needed expansion in 1984 and major renovations in 2000 and 2004 by Annum Architects. 

(Looking more like an office park than a college library, this is my least favorite building at Bowdoin, so it won't be featured here.)

Other occupants of the wings are the Office for Inclusion and Diversity, the Banister 106 classroom and media presentation room, and a Muslim Prayer Space. The Chapel's wide array of uses attests to the endurance of its granite edifice through the ages, still ringing its bells and boasting its towers from far and wide to declare, "This is Bowdoin."

Class of 1875 Memorial Gateway on axis with Chapel in 1907.

The Chapel's axial path gave rise to future campus growth on that axis. The Class of 1875 Memorial Gateway (1902, McKim, Mead & White) mirrored the duality of the Chapel's towers with twin fluted columns and Grecian urns in the "City Beautiful" classical style. Their axial symmetry with their progenitor framed and reinforced the Chapel's central sanctity to Bowdoin

until the Visual Arts Center (1975, Edward Larrabee Barnes) blocked their view of the Chapel with a new, ominous gateway to the Quad, forcing passage through a dark tunnel to enter the campus – a barbarian byproduct of the modern age that was invading the academic peace of historicism that once blessed Bowdoin.

To be continued...

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!