Notre Dame Main Building Tour

Today I will complete my tour of part of the Notre Dame Campus.

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The Main Building

The Main Building represents Notre Dame’s past and present.

Originally, this building was the hub of all campus life and included space for dorms and meals.

Today, it serves  primarily as a headquarters for administration, including the office of the President, Office of Admissions, and various other offices and services of the University.  It also has classrooms and meeting rooms. 

This structure is actually the third building to stand on the site. It was built in 1879, the same year in which the previous building was destroyed by fire.

The previous 6-storied, 14 year old brick building burned on April 23, 1879 and ground breaking for the new building was on Saturday, May 17th. They wasted no time.

The first stone was placed on Monday, May 19th and the three-story building was completed in September.  Meticulously kept records record the construction like this:

"This was a day innocent of labor disputes and delays. There was no eight-hour day, no forty-hour week. With this advantage, and with the three hundred workmen employed, the constant stream of stone that came by rail, the unbroken lines of wagons bringing brick from the kilns of South Bend and Bertrand, the all-out effort was magnificent. The building, with its countless angles and corners and jutting points of masonry, the numerous gables and turrets, the classic pillars that support the dome and statue, puzzles anyone who tries to classify it."

Indeed, the actual architectural design has baffled designers ever since.

The architect called it "modern Gothic."  A later University architect referred to the Victorian Monument as "an eclectic and somewhat naive combination of pointed windows, medieval moldings and classical columns."  Others have simply dubbed it as pure and simple "modern Sorin."  (The University founder and president)

Regardless of these varying opinions, I found it's turrets, pointed windows, its many corners and angles to be totally fascinating.

The Golden Dome was added to this building in 1882 and was most recently regilded in 2005. I found it interesting that the regilding process used only about a "fist-full" of gold leaf to cover the entire structure.  Remarkable!

Atop the Dome, is a 19-foot-tall, 4,000-pound statue of  the Mother Mary, for whom the University is named - Notre Dame - "Our Mother". The statue, a gift from the sisters of adjacent Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame's sister school, was designed and furnished by the nuns to sit atop the dome. 

 

 Of course, the highlight inside the Main Building is the dome and circular staircase.

The walls on the third level reminded me of a delicate Wedgewood bowl.

Deana, my friend and capable tour guide actually works on the first floor.  She explained that on home football days, the brass section of the band line up around the staircase and play a concert.  This will definitely be added to a future visit as well as the organ concert.

Can you imagine the sound that must be.

I was so captivated by the inside of the dome, that I almost missed the beautiful mosaic floor beneath.

The second floor hallways are lined with the Columbus Murals, a group of large paintings by Italian painter and Notre Dame professor Luigi Gregori, depicting the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.  I have read where the few Native American students on campus have recently protested these paintings and insist they be removed.  I for one hope they aren't.

The exit doors with their etched glass panels, kind of confirm the architectural confusion.

They are rather difficult to see in my pictures, but in campus lore, if a student ascended the front steps of the Main Building before graduation, that student was doomed never to graduate. Students were not deemed worthy to climb the steps and smoke with their professors until they received their degrees and were educational equals.

This tradition dates back to Father Sorin, when 19th-century porch etiquette and smoking rituals dictated that only faculty were allowed to use the steps and smoke on the front porch.

To this day,  The outside front steps leading to the second floor of the Main Building cannot be used by students until after they graduate. 

Borrowed

I borrowed this picture above to better show the steps and size of the building.

From the top of the steps.  The Campus Mall is just beautiful and on this graduation weekend, the tulips were being removed and replaced with geraniums, I think.

These graduate friends were having a ball posing for their picture and making memories of their final day as ND students.

From here, I walked back toward St. Mary Lake and enjoyed the beauty from that vantage point.

As I was leaving the campus, I found this cemetery.  In doing some research I learned that true to his pioneering and visionary spirit, Fr. Edward Sorin, established Cedar Grove Cemetery in 1843, a year after he founded the University of Notre Dame. At that time, Cedar Grove was on the far outskirts of campus.  Today, it is between the lake and the busy street outside the campus.

And this concludes my most recent tour of the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana.

Thank you Deana for sharing your lunch break to show me around.

If you missed Part 1 of this tour, click below:
Notre Dame University Basilica