Bellairsia: a scholarly attempt

a scholarly attempt

"a scholarly attempt" is the fifth article to appear during the 1958-59 school year in the University of Notre Dame Scholastic humor column, "Escape".

By John Bellairs: Scholastic, Vol. 100, No. 05 - October 31, 1958; page 7.

In answer to a charge (made up for the occasion) that I do not devote enough space to things of permanent value, I am presenting a scholarly work which should be of much value to students of architecture, and which will certainly hasten the death of some professors.

An Architectural History of the Buildings on the Campus

BADIN HALL

This building is an excellent example of the period known as Dungeon Revival or Early Tenement. An interesting feature of these building is the complete absence of any kind of front entrance. This has caused much confusion, and recently it was suggested that one side be arbitrarily labeled "Front," and another "Side," and so on, although this procedure would undoubtedly stifle the creative imaginations of many students, Badin Hall was originally intended as a display for the Homecoming Game of 1903, which was held on Halloween. It captures much of the picturesque flavor of condemned buildings, while retaining an incomparable air of imminent collapse. The other buildings of the is fruitful period, Sorin, Washington Hall, the main Building, etc., have been glorified too much in print already to require any descriptions by me.

THE MORRISSEY-HOWARD-LYONS QUADRANGLE

This interesting group is done in the style which is known as Early-Football Grandeur; which is divided into two subsections, Depression Ivy-League and Tudor Gothic. Collectively, Lyons and Morrissey may be described as Tudor Gothic, since the first is Tudor, while the second is Gothic. The rear of Lyons is especially Tudor, with its half-timbered archway and mullioned windows. The students who live in this section of the hall are conscious of their historical heritage, and are seen wearing forked beards and velvet doublets on occasion.

Every now and then a student is elected to preside as Henry VIII, and executions are held in the halls after lights-out. On the other hand, the Goths of Morrissey are divided into Ostrogoths and Visigoths and hold intramural warfare. A favorite practice of these tradition-minded students is sacking the Golf Shop. This contributes to no end of student rivalry. Howard is such a fine example of its type that it has been kept as a museum for some time (see July 8 issue of "Famous Dormitories of Western Man"; also "The Dormitory Considered as Museum"). Thus, no students are allowed to live in it, and it is populated only by excess rectors and archaic caretakers. This accounts for the fact that nobody knows anyone who lives in Howard. Those who think they live in Howard should send a postcard to me, and I will arrange for an interview to straighten them out on this rather difficult problem.

DILLON HALL

This magnificent edifice done in Neo-Ivy-Covered-Harvard-Imitation, has more rooms and less living space than any hall on campus. This is due to the fact that 96.3% of all floor space is covered by interminable corridors, which give the hall the unique quality usually reserved for the Catacomb of St. Callixtus. These corridors hold a vast amount of stagnant, slightly greenish air, since there is no ventilation of any kind in the hall. A biologist, interested in the problem, recently analyzed a sample of air in the northeast corridor of Dillon Hall, and found that it dated from June 3, 1935. LOBUND is planning an expedition to this fruitful sited, in hopes of finding even more archaic samples (not counting students).

Other interesting statistics on Dillon: it is composed of 6.3 trillion bricks, made on the job by students who were working off their bill at the Book Store. All the students in Dillon, if laid end to end on Notre Dame Avenue, would certainly by horribly mangled by passing cars. This hall also contains an economy feature - sinks without faucets. This will doubtless cut down on needless water usage.

THE BIOLOGY BLDG.

This is a representative type of the style of architecture known as Late Factory. What kind of factory this building was before it was consecrated to biology is not known, but it is believed that the McClosky Rubbish Co. built it. The company folded in 1903, when it was discovered that South Bend was already blessed with a surfeit of rubbish, and the leftover stock was piled next to Washington Hall, and is called the "Old Huddle," a corruption of "Old Rubble."

An interesting feature of the Biology Building is the magnificently sculptured frieze over the main entrance. It is intended to depict the Spirit of Smallpox being routed by the armed figures of Cortisone and Formaldehyde. Professor McTrash has not yet admitted that he created this, but perhaps he is only being coy.

THE ARCHITECTURE BLD.

It is fitting that this penetrating (perhaps you prefer "boring") article be climaxed by a description of the home of our architectural skills. This building, a near replica of the Taunton, Mass., Police Station was until recently, famed for its luxuriant ivy, which concealed an otherwise vile exterior. When the underbrush was removed, a sign was revealed which proudly stated that the building was the Hoynes College of Law, much to the confusion of freshmen law students.

The story behind this odd name was revealed by Professor T. X. Cuneiform, the campus authority on Odd Incidents. It seems that, in the fall of 1878, Notre Dame and Harvard were engaged in a bitter rivalry. This was the pre-football era, and the sport then was Scavenger-Hunt, a game in vogue at the time. This custom for the previous ten seasons had been to make a list of things possessed by Hoynes University of East Wagon Rut, British Columbia. Then the two rival teams would descend upon this hapless Canadian campus and ransack freely the movable possessions of all sizes and shapes, with victory going to the team with the most loot. This outing came to be both a Student Trip for Harvard and Notre Dame and a fierce intramural battle, in which the students of Hoynes U. could take no part. This, of course, disturbed the Hoynes students who were irritated by the annual sacking of their campus. Therefore, they began to lock up and nail down everything of any importance on campus, with the result that the excursion became an even greater challenge to the teams of Notre Dame and Harvard in 1878.

The Notre Dame team arrived a full day ahead of the Harvard group, and stormed into East Wagon Rut, looking for things to pillage. Suddenly the eye of the captain fell on the Hoynes College of Law, which was a building noted for its collection of Byzantine murals. It was no time at all before the team had put this edifice on rollers and started it to the railroad station, where it was dismantled and spread evenly throughout the passenger cars. The trip home was enlivened by skirmishes with itinerant Harvard bands on their way to Hoynes, but the treasure arrived at South Bend intact, and was set up where it stands today. The ivy was removed to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the Destruction of Hoynes (completed by Harvard in 1879). Truth is stranger than fiction.

Commentary

There's not too much that really needs explanation here as it's a good example of Bellairs making something out of nothing.

Architecturally the buildings in the sophomore quadrangle were built in a style officially labeled Tudor Gothic, explained Bowen:

"In fact this was the label applied to most of the buildings constructed on the campus between the twenties and the early fifties such as O'Shaughnessy Hall, the Liberal and Fine Arts building, where English majors like John and I had most of our classes. Two new dormitories built at around the same time were in a style that might be called Squarish Moderne. Anyway, John was accurate in labeling the sophomore quad Early Football Grandeur, in that the prewar building boom was nourished by the University's new cash cow. [2]"

Myers confirmed Bellairs is fairly accurate in that they were constructed in the 1920s and 1930s and that his description of Tudor Gothic is not too far off the mark:

"They were your standard ivy-covered stone collegiate buildings of the period [2]."

For those interested in campus history, Myers said Badin Hall is indeed one of the oldest on campus, dating back to the 19th century:

"It is rather nondescript and boxy. As I remember it had an exterior porch supported by iron pillars, much like the architecture in the French Quarter of New Orleans, but without the filigreed iron work or the charm. It truly had no main entrance, just a couple of nondescript doors on various sides of the building [2]."

Morrissey, Lyons, and Howard halls truly did form a quadrangle, with the fourth side opening onto the main quadrangle that forms the east-west axis of the campus:

"During our era, these were all sophomore residence halls, and there was a definite pecking order among them. Lyons Hall, with a picturesque archway cutting through the building and a fine view of Saint Mary's lake in in side, was by far the most desirable. As students chose their rooms each year in order of grade point average, those in Lyons were generally snapped up first. Howard, at the opposite end from Lyons, was somewhere in the middle, though it had some truly excellent rooms. Morrissey, the hall in the middle, was the least desirable, and it tended to be regarded as a hall for jocks (but the actual scholarship athletes were spread more or less evenly throughout all the residence halls with no separation whatever from the rest of the student body). It should be noted that both Bellairs and I lived in Howard Hall during the 1956-57 year, I and my roommate in an excellent room having three-way ventilation (it was in a wing of the building) and John in a single room. Bellairs' comment about residents sending him a postcard evoked a response from the columnist in his November 14 column [2]."

Dillon Hall was indeed very big and alleged to be airless, noted Bowen:

"John suggested that its architecture was imitation Ivy League, which is a fair enough criticism of all Notre Dame's Tudor Gothic buildings, but Harvard was the wrong choice. Yale went for Gothic, but Harvard went for Georgian. Of course John, not having been out of the Midwest, didn't know this, although we eastern sophisticates were always willing to set him and other rubes straight [1]."

Bowen also pointed out the the Huddle was the name of the student snack bar:

"When we arrived on campus in 1955, the University had recently opened a new student center that included a much larger and more up-to-date Huddle, but the original one was kept open and renamed 'The Old Huddle.' It occupied a small, square, rather squalid-looking brick building. Many of the oldest buildings on campus seemed to have been made of a form of brick that deteriorated over time, the original yellow becoming blacker and blacker until they wound up somewhere between battleship gray and olive drab - a fairly depressing prospect [1]."

Myers added the "greatly expanded but ghastly" food court is occupied by all the usual culprits of fast food chains [2].

LOBUND refers to Laboratory of Biology, University of Notre Dame:

"which has been quite celebrated since the 1930s for its research on raising animals in germ-free environments. The Biology Building, dating back to about the turn of the century, was physically attached to one of the then-newest buildings on campus, the Nieuland Hall of Science. Washington Hall was (and is) the campus's main auditorium and the location of the College Quiz Bowl when it came to South Bend [2]."

The nickname "Professor McTrash" is a Bellairsian dig at one of the most celebrated Notre Dame professors of that era, Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, who had begun teaching at the university in 1955.

During Bellairs's time on campus, the Architecture Building was indeed cleared of its ivy cover, and this process did reveal a sign saying Hoynes College of Law. "That's as far as the facts go, of course," says Bowen, "and John took off from there. Hoynes was one of the University's first law professors. When the Law School moved into bigger quarters the name did not move with it, so the sign surprised everyone. In comparing the building to the police station of Taunton, Massachusetts, John may have been twitting me; that is the city where my high school was located. [1]"

"Bellairs' reference to a Notre Dame-Harvard rivalry is pure fantasy," added Myers, "as we had no relations whatever with Harvard, which in fact snubbed an offer to schedule them for football in the early 1920s [2]."