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new complexes of music school and
theater and medical school and
hospital that had come into being as
the result of Mr. Eastman's extraordinary
generosity to the University of
Rochester.
So it is not surprising that, in
1921, when Oak Hill was first considered
as the site for the University
of Rochester's proposed new campus,
the firm of Gordon and Kaelber
should prepare preliminary sketches
of how it might be laid out on this
axis or on that, with now the library
and now the arts buildings or perhaps
a future graduate school as the central
feature.
With the architectural firm of Gordon
and Kaelber came other Eastman
retainers. Landscape artist Alling S.
DeForest drew up the no. 1 planting
plan (from which the architects traced
their varying schemes), laying out the
paths and fountains for the main
quadrangle as an enlarged version of
the 1902 plans for Mr. Eastman's
formal gardens.
A.W. Hopeman & Sons, active in
many Eastman projects, were the
general contractors.
Associated architects McKim,
Mead & White, who played that role
for Eastman's house, theater, and
music school as well as for the new
medical school buildings-but who
were usually in conflict with Mr.
Eastman's ideas of simplicity, utility,
and economy-were also part of the
original package. This relationship
survived only until 1927, however,
when Charles Platt took over as
advising architect.
But, although MM&W had
departed from the scene, the firm left
behind an important legacy: architect
Philipp Merz, whom Philip Will,
Jr., then a rookie draftsman with
Gordon and Kaelber, recalls as a
major influence on the design of the
project.
Philipp Merz was a dedicated
classicist who understood the Greek
root of his name better than did
University publications of the time,
which consistently left off the final
"p." He was also a master of classical
detail. "It was his claim, which I fully
accept," Philip Will writes, "that
you could take him to Florence,
blindfold him, let him feel the
molding of any of the city's great
Renaissance buildings, and he could
tell who the architect was."
The details that Merz designed for
the River Campus buildings were
drawn full size on brown wrapping
paper and rendered with white and
purple crayon. (He was color blind.)
One of Philip Will's jobs was to trace
these designs as a record to be kept
while the original went to aNew
York City modeler, whose plaster
maquettes were then copied by stone
masons. "Merz drawings were works
of art in themselves," Philip Will
writes, "well worth framing and
hanging."
Indeed they were. Especially fine are
the wrought-iron details for the triple
doors of the library and the flagpoles
at the entrance to the quadrangle.
From Merz's facile pencil, pen, and
purple crayon came the new U niversity
seal "to correct a misimpression,"
as Rush Rhees noted,
"naturally derived from the date
1851'" on our old seal.... A new
design . . . by Mr. Philip [sic] Merz
of the staff of our University
architects . . . incorporates the old
motto Mcliara from the old seal and
symbols of Liberal Arts, Music and
Medicine. The date has been put
back to 1850 ...."
The maquettes for the two carved
stone female figures representing Art
and Industry, to be placed above the
twin grand staircases of the library,
evoked widespread protest because
Industry was depicted holding a
Kodak camera in her outstretched
hand. "Too crass," declared the
detractors. A representative faculty
protest committee of two-Memorial
Art Gallery Director Gertrude Herdle
and Professor Dexter Perkins-was
dispatched to the office of the president.
What was said is not recorded,
but the finished, full-sized statue
holds a strange, boxy, lamp of learning.
There is no evidence that either
Edwin Gordon or his partner William
G. Kaelber ever touched pencil to
paper in creating the design of the
campus, although Gordon's pudgy
hands belied a rare sketching talent.
He would stand looking over
shoulders in the drafting room, ostensibly
to critique a design or two; but
soon, edging a draftsman off his
stool, Gordon was observed completing
the piece himself. Will
"'Referring to the year the seal was adopted
rather than to the year the University was
founded.
Kaelber kept the office pencils by his
drafting board so as to watch who
took what. "Ed has his peculiarities,"
the draftsmen used to say.
"Will has his pecuniarities."
Before the architects' designs
could be translated from pencil sketches
to solid reality, contractors were
required to move, if not mountains,
at least one fairly hefty hill to prepare
the site. Instead of emulating the random
American campus on a rolling
hill, the plans called for shaving off
the top of Oak Hill to receive the
quad-a somewhat artificial arrangement
for the location, some have
said. Considering this, and the quantities
of earth that had to be moved
for the extensive underground
systems, and the tunneling that had
to be done under the railroad
separating the campus from the new
medical school, followed by grading
and planting-not to mention construction
of eleven buildings-the
three-year schedule seems
miraculous.
"M and M: mud and misery" was
how some members of the construction
crews remembered those years.
To Charles Urlaub of A.W.
Hopeman it was just another job,
albeit a big one. Instead of the usual
"half dozen men on the job, who
would certainly have been lost" in
the massive undertaking, as many as
800 workers were involved, Urlaub
estimates. This beehive of activity
necessitated traffic controls and signs
identifying as yet unindividualized
steel frames as "LIBRARY,"
"CHEMISTRY," etc., so workmen
could find their posts. In lieu of
modern Caterpillar equipment, surefooted
horses, playing out their last
act as construction workers, joined
new Mack trucks in the task.
George Eastman's special pleasure
was to watch the giant trees being
moved about (one crashed to the
ground and became fireplace wood
for the W elles-Brown Room in the
library). The young elms that would
eventually shade the quad were growing
in soil removed from Oak Hill to
a nearby nursery.
The pride and goal of the
Hopeman company was to have the
campus ready by September 1930.
Despite delays and setbacks and a
particularly lengthy strike that final
summer, the dedication was delayed
by only a month. Thirty years to the
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