“The framing of the College in red brick and limestone, steeped in history and tradition, is profoundly moving.”
These lines from President Gregory Hess’ From Center Hall essay in the Winter issue of Wabash Magazine—”A Life of Place”—made me take a closer look at our buildings. And he’s right—the care with which the campus has been designed and built over the past 184 years is inspiring.
To illustrate the President’s essay, I took a walk on a January afternoon on the lookout for red brick and limestone—from Center Hall to the new Residential Life District. We used three of the photos I took in the magazine. In the gallery above you’ll find a few more, plus a selection from photographer Grace Vaught from Summer 2016.
Here’s that opening text:
A Place to Call Home
When I first visited Wabash in January 2013, I felt as though I stepped into a snow globe.
There is a timelessness about the Wabash campus.
The framing of the College in red brick and limestone, steeped in history and tradition, is profoundly moving. The arrangement of academic buildings around the mall and the iconic Pioneer Chapel signals the College’s purpose and sense of community. Even the trees celebrate our values: The arboretum is a place for contemplation and a hedge against a world that too often forgets that we learn not from experience, but from reflecting upon it.
The Wabash culture stirred me most, though, as I spoke that evening in the Chapel—a structure built so that every student and professor on campus can gather face-to-face. Walking the center aisle as a candidate to be the College’s 16th president, I could clearly see every person’s expression. When a young man in the balcony at the back asked a question about his College, I could hear every word. We looked each other in the eye and shared a story about our futures.
Say what you will about all the testosterone at this place, but it’s a very intimate campus…
—President Gregory Hess
Read the complete From Center Hall in WM Winter 2016, in mailboxes beginning February 19 and at WM Online.
—Steve Charles
