This is the clock on the front of Main Hall. Yes, it is telling the time. I really did take this photo at 10:20 this morning. Who even remembers when this clock ever worked? I've corresponded about it with Leigh Ramsay '69; he's a graduate of more than 40 years ago, and he doesn't remember it being in operation, although he does remember that it was there. Does anyone remember it ever working?
Main Hall has come a long way over the last year of restoration work. It has a beautiful new slate roof. It has new windows. One of the restoration highlights happened a few months ago, when I spent a very early April morning watching as trucks delivered the new dome and bay window to campus, then transported the pieces onto the Oval, followed by cranes lifting them up and, with the help of many guiding hands, securing them onto place on the building. It took hours, but you can watch it all happen in about a minute in our cool stop-action video:
Then there are all the things you can't see as easily: new bricks and mortar, new stainless steel support beams. Right now, the front steps are gone and there's been a moat dug in the front as they work to eliminate the water infiltration into the basement. Pretty soon all of that will be fixed, too, and it will look as if nothing had happened.
I took my first trip inside the building this week to take some pictures for Wagner brochures. The classrooms are looking spiffy with fresh paint and new furniture. The theater looks beautiful with new seats and curtains. The first group to use the new seats were prospective students and parents here this week for a Campus Visit Day.
Seats that don't have springs sticking into your rear end! What a luxury! Those prospective students and parents didn't even realize how good they have it, but that's ok. Wagner theater students will no longer have to work as hard to distract their audience from the pain! (Hope that won't spell a decline in show quality on the Main Stage … nah.)
— Laura Barlament, Editor, Wagner Magazine, laura.barlament@wagner.edu
