I'm sure most universities have buildings on campus they aren't overly proud of. For example, the campus where I work used to have something called the Wood Building. It wasn't a building people wasted film on, so there weren't many pictures. Those few images I've seen show a two-story academic building, longer than wide because the administration sought to wedge it into a strip of land too narrow for anything else. Well, that's not true because they could have left it as green space – much as it was for the last 30 years – but instead, some squirrelly architect wanted what looked like a strip mall with its front doors opening out almost onto Grand Avenue. Anyone running excitedly outside celebrating the end of the semester would have oncoming traffic run them down. Thoughts and prayers.
Alumni told me the name of the building was part of the joke. The university named it after Seraphina Wood, one of the first women sociology professors on campus. She went on to have a lengthy and respected career in research and academia, so it makes sense for the university to create an unattractive two-story thing to celebrate her accomplishments. Apparently, it had to be a two-story building because an obscure state law requires colleges and universities to have total building square footage proportional to student enrollment. The campus couldn't create a permanent, four-story building that would last 80-plus years when overall enrollment initially exceeded 5,000 only five years before. No, the state only allotted funds for some shoddy-looking thing that people assumed was made of glass and wood because it was called the Wood Building.
Contrary to the joke, the Wood Building was made of more than glass and wood. However, in the mid-1970s, when the Wood Building was about a decade old, the administration found the funds to expand the building. Most building expansions resulted in a new wing perpendicular to the original structure. Not so here: architects and artisans (plus magicians and practitioners of dumb luck) added a third floor to the Wood Building. This was a grand idea until students experienced the end result. There was no internal second-to-third-story staircase. One had to exit the building from the front (avoiding overcrowding so as not to get pushed onto Grand Avenue), go around to the back of the building, and take the new metal staircase to the third floor. This must have been hell in the rain or for someone in a wheelchair.
The university wisely demolished the atrocity in the mid-1980s, returning the area to nature where a small grove of poplar trees exists.
About the time the Wood Building was coming down, the Brown Building was going up. The university had learned some lessons in classroom construction over the last twenty years, though this was a five-story office building. Not that it mattered, but its bricks were more a buff-khaki color, and Brown had been a long-time member of the board of regents that someone felt the campus needed to remember.
Staff, including myself, visit the administrative offices in the Brown Building about once a month (an activity we collectively call "going down to Brown"). Its interior has remained unchanged over the decades as there is still evidence of a carpet-like material covering the walls. All its carpet is a mix of earth tones with mauve – seemingly not current decorating trends – thereby making the building look older.
There was one recent change. For as long as I can remember, a non-descript wall stood beside the business services office on the second floor. How non-descript was it? I think it was coral-pink colored, but I had ignored it for so long that I had no idea the original color. But now it was blue. It was hard to miss, as it was the only blue decoration in the building. Why? Well, no one could say. Someone blamed a mismatched work order, and a wall in another building should have received the paint. Another theory was that it was an overnight prank carried out by disgruntled employees to piss off the associate vice president.
I returned a few times to show the change to others in my area. Two or three people always talked in hushed tones, trying not to stare at the only thing worth talking about. I overheard one ask what they were supposed to do with it and the influx of unnecessary foot traffic, and now that the word had gotten out.
(Blue) WallIt was still there on Monday.
(c. 2015)
Artist unknown, American
Overall: 274.955 x 1371.6 cm (108 1/4 x 540 in.)
Frame: No
Medium: latex paint, 30-year-old gypsum board wall.
Long have the pathfinders and pilgrims of yore looked to the heavens for their answers. Who amongst you has not asked, “Why is the sky blue?” So, too, must we ask, “Why is this wall blue?”
In sweeping strokes, the artist provides a window’s view of the world where no window existed. Cloudless, spotless, clear – the optimism of a sunny day and the sky is the limit. The wall space was limited since the canvas did not stray around a corner. Or maybe the artist ran out of paint.
The color of spring and rebirth is featured prominently in this full-length adaptation of the wild yonder that simultaneously tames and excites. Aside from their limited, lazy Piet Mondrian inspirations, the work reveals little of the artist. Colors are complete, framed by the edge of the canvas, thus implying that this is all there is – there is no more. The viewer leaves with an unknown pictorial continuum - just what extends beyond the physical boundary of the painting? And will it provide any more answers?
Life – have fun with it!
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