It was with little charity that my friends and I coined the term ‘retro-space-neo-gothic’ to describe the Johnson School’s Management Library Reading Room, or 101 Sage Hall. Standing there waiting for a bus on Feeney Way, it wasn’t the first time that I had questioned the harmony between the scaly-backed wall of glass and the dreaming spires of Sage Hall behind it. This low, snaking protrusion and the new 8-bit southeast tower smack more of Disneyland than the lofty red brick of Charles Babcock’s original High Victorian design.
I am not the first to criticize the unmistakable, universal language of the University business school: “ostentatious […] generic modern – glass, panel, brick.” In fact, Cornell has here eschewed the status quo by dedicating one its oldest and most characterful edifices to the study of enterprise (perhaps unsurprisingly, given the background and acumen of its founder). And actually, on the whole, I’m not complaining; the subsequent renovation of Sage Hall by the Hillier Group did much for the preservation of an ailing historic building, while reclaiming the year-round use of its courtyard through an innovative glass enclosure.
Cornell has made some recent efforts to balance the preservation of its architectural heritage with growing student demands, opting for similar, energy-efficient glass casings around the Baker Lab and Goldwin Smith Hall. It’s not a bad idea, in a climate of abundant snowfall and, well, less abundant sunshine, to create more light-filled, temperature-controlled spaces that enhance, rather than replace, the storied walls they protect. Klarman Hall, with its view of the heavens, plaster cast statues and hewed rotunda, achieves an elegance comparable to the iconic Great Court at the British Museum.
This hasn’t always been the case. The whimsical hydraulics lab collapsed after years of neglect, and the replacement of stately James Law Hall with girdered Uris has not exactly been uncontroversial. Even as a rare fan of Olin Library, that functional, grayscale fortress of the early 1960s, I struggle to understand the short-sightedness that let it blast through Boardman Hall, whose Romanesque hexagons blended softly with the rest of the Arts Quad. I.M. Pei’s spectacular Johnson Museum of Art, on the other hand, lands with such virtuosic force that it could be forgiven for crushing almost any structure lucky enough to be in its way. The closest thing I have to a critique is how easily the panoramic views of lake, forests and campus can draw one’s eye away from the art.
As a former Londoner, used to seeing the medieval juxtaposed with the brutalist, I feel an affinity for the eclectic mélange of architectures that Cornell has assembled here on the hill. It seems fitting for a university that has always characterized itself as diverse and forward-thinking, and contrasts with other institutions known (apocryphally) for artificially aging their buildings, and for (actually) continuing to ride the neo-gothic into the 21st century. Still, such architectural progression is generally best achieved when the new is carefully placed alongside the old, rather than on top of it. The recent showing of Godfrey Reggio’s prophetic Koyaanisqatsi (amid the impeccably preserved frescoes of Cornell’s 1920s Cinema) highlights humanity’s Promethean propensity to explode its own constructions as though they were mere sandcastles. The setting of large-scale demolitions to Philip Glass’s alternately clanking then gleeful score raises deep questions as to whether we are a species more in awe of our creative or destructive power.
So why does the Management Library Reading Room, which sits shinily alongside Sage Hall without obstructing, let alone bulldozing it, continue to frustrate me? Well, actually, it doesn’t. At least, not since I paid close attention to a set of intriguing black-and-white photographs put on display by the Liberty Hyde Bailey Conservatory. Not a particularly ornate structure itself (though a handy portal to the tropics during the colder months), the Bailey Conservatory is only the latest in a series of greenhouses that date all the way back to the 19th century. The earliest of these, built in 1882, was a beautifully proportioned glass pavilion whose appearance struck me as oddly familiar. Where before had I seen that graceful vaulting, those delicate Tudor arches? It slowly dawned on me that 101 Sage Hall is not, in fact, some glittering white elephant that has somehow wandered out of the grand circus tent behind it. It is a knowing nod to the architectural history of Cornell, a loving reimagination of the original Victorian conservatory.
So, armed with this new knowledge of Sage 101 and its raison d’être, my waits for the bus stop on Feeney Way are now buoyed by ruminations on aesthetics and the makings of successful architecture. I look more charitably at the Reading Room and almost sense the art-nouveau tracery of a Parisian metro entrance, the contorted organics of Gaudi and a vague anemoia for the world’s shattered crystal palaces. Am I saying that you have to love it, too, or that all new architecture needs to have historical precedence? I don’t think so (although it’s interesting to wonder why my tastes demanded such a justification). What I suppose I am trying to do is to recast that ageless maxim not to judge a structure by its façade alone, and to say to the Hillier Group (now Studio Hillier): “I see what you did there.”
Charlie Tebbutt is a third year PhD candidate in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. His fortnightly column Rêveries is a collection of musings that wander from the hill, over the Atlantic and out to the beautiful planet that we all share. He can be reached at [email protected].
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