Nott Memorial/Union College, Schenectady, NY

The Nott Memorial was begun in the 1850s by Union President Eliphalet Nott and architect Edward Tuckerman Potter. The building is an imaginative statement in the "High Victorian Gothic" style and today it is widely recognized as a nationally significant structure.

It is essentially a stone cylinder, 89 feet in diameter, supporting a cast-iron drum and dome. A central space rises 100 feet to the dome, where 709 translucent glass illuminators are arranged in different bands of color. The exterior of the dome is sheathed in three colors of Vermont slate.

A band of red slates bears an inscription from the Talmud in Hebrew, translated as "The work is great, the day is short, the reward is much, the Master is urgent."

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Speaker: Wayne Harvey

 

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