|
||
|
Alumni Review
Features
Departments
eNews Extra
Contact Information
Hamilton Alumni Review
315-859-4648 (fax) |
|
|
 Thirteen Ways of Looking at the ChapelBy Phillip J. Hoying '09 and Donald ChallengerLike the speaker in Wallace Stevens' enigmatic poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," Hamiltonians have known the Hill's iconic Chapel from many perspectives: as a beacon amid blazing foliage and, a season later, snowy ridges; down campus vistas, through numberless windows and branches in morning light and blue evening. And as in the poem, they know the Chapel by ear, its "noble accents and lucid, inescapable rhythms" — the Chapel's history as a forum for rhetoric, elocution and public speaking from the 19th century on; the bell that peals the passage of the hours, a lone note linking generations of hurrying students. House of worship, wedding altar, social hub and oasis of solitude, classroom, concert hall, laboratory, dormitory, theatre, site of pranks and protests, memorial to Hamilton's fallen. Until 1872, Chapel space even served as Hamilton's library. In 2002 its quilled cupola became in fact what it had been in effect for generations of alumni — part of the College's official logo, adorning caps, cups, calendars, correspondence. "No other building," Walter Pilkington wrote in his 1962 history of the Hill, "has been identified so closely with the growth and spirit of the College." And yet this enduring symbol of all that is Hamilton can become so familiar as to recede into the scenery — vaguely acknowledged, half-forgotten, never fully explored. The summer painting of the steeple (that's Vanessa Vore and Dave Aiello of the Utica Painting Co. in the lift on page 28) gave the Alumni Review the opportunity to stop, to look up with a renewed sense of appreciation, and to comb archives and memories for 13 of the Chapel's fascinating chapters. 1. In 1825 the Board of Trustees, under President Henry Davis, decided that the College's need for a dedicated center of worship was so great that construction on North College residence hall, begun two years earlier, was halted so that resources could be poured into the Chapel. The Chapel was completed in 1827; North College was not finished until 1842 — by coincidence, during the administration of President Simeon North. Davis, North and all the first nine presidents of the College, from Azel Backus through Melancthon Woolsey Stryker, who retired in 1917, were ministers, as was founder Samuel Kirkland.  2. Noted architect Philip Hooker of Albany is widely credited in College lore (and on a nearby historical marker) for the design of the Chapel, but in fact he created only the tower-and-steeple façade. The main body of the building, with its distinctive third story, was designed by a trustee, John Lothrop of Utica. In the 1960s, efforts were made to determine if the building might be the only surviving example of a three-story chapel in the nation, but they were not definitive; today the Chapel is typically described as "thought to be" the only remaining structure of its type. In 1927 the College commissioned Bagg and Newkirk architects to create these and other drawings of the Chapel so that it could be re-created exactly in case it was ever destroyed by fire. 3. "The tower, I presume," wrote architect Philip Hooker as he began his design in 1825, "ought to contain a clock." And eventually it did — more than a half-century later. The clock and its three faces, directed north, east and south, were not installed until 1877, a gift from John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia merchant and civic leader. Until then, the circular spaces for the clock were plugged with boards and stovepipes. Stories — never substantiated — still circulate that early Hamiltonians used either one of the pipes or perhaps the steeple itself as a sundial. 4. In the early years of the Chapel, students were called to daily 6 a.m. religious services by the bell, "which rang for two minutes — to dress in — and tolled for three — to get to Chapel," Pilkington noted in his history of the College. The hour was a source of misery, especially in the bitter dark of winter mornings — the Chapel was heated by a lone stove in the center of the hall — and services eventually were pushed back to 7 and then to 8 a.m. In 1936, compulsory weekday-morning services were cut to thrice a week. "The resentment against it by the undergraduates was so deep-seated that I feel that any benefits which might have been derived from compulsory week-day chapel were defeated by the attitude of the men," wrote Meredith Conley '36 in the Alumni Review. In 1942, services were moved to noon; mandatory attendance eventually dwindled to once a week, and the requirement was dropped altogether in 1965 following years of sometimes acrimonious debate and at least one student protest in 1964. A Board of Trustees committee cited "a reluctance, as a matter of principle, to associate compulsion with religious worship." 5. The Chapel has housed four bells in its history. The current bell, weighing 1,500 pounds, has been in place since 1902 and according to Pilkington was installed in the middle of a snowstorm and lifted into place by the student body. A similar bell had been installed in 1899 but cracked after two years. The Chapel's first bell weighed a mere 250 pounds, boasted "no power or music," and was replaced in 1867 by an 800-pound bell inscribed Ora et Labora. The current bell, cast by the Meneely Bell Co. of Troy, N.Y., keeps the Latin phrase, meaning "pray and work," St. Benedict's precept of moderation. Student bell-ringers — both officially designated ones and, frequently, pranksters and interlopers — rang the bell by hand until 1950, when the mechanism was automated. Page 1 | 2
 |
 1865  1872  1895  1899  1908  Religious Service, mid-1900s |
|
|
||
