Investiture

Today marked the installation of Harvard University's 28th president, Drew Gilpin Faust. (She was a professor of American history at Penn for a year while I was there, and I remember hearing about it when she was "poached" by Harvard to head up the new Radcliffe Institute.) Her ascent has been exceptionally rapid, as she takes up one of the chief posts in academia less than seven years after leaving her professorship at Penn. The ceremony took place in Harvard Yard (or Tercentenary Theater, a term apparently never used by the locals) in front of the august Widener library, whose massive Corinthian columns evoke the awe that many modern buildings cannot match.

This brings to mind an interesting conversation I had with an architecture student, a modernist, who advocated in favor of many of the newer building styles which I often find lacking. It forced me to articulate why, exactly, older seems to be better. Looking around Harvard Yard, I'd say it's partly due to the substantial physical presence of masonry buildings, along with the readily evident craftsmanship and detailing that has been lost in virtually all modern construction. (For example, the stone in which the name of Widener Library is carved reveals itself, on closer inspection, to be scored with a subtle grid pattern that's barely evident from ground level.) This ornateness reveals thoughtfulness and care in design, but also generates continuous visual interest.

But perhaps a more enduring reason is the link these traditional styles have with a global architectural heritage. I remember scrambling over the almost completely deserted ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Baal Heliopolitan in Ba'albek, Lebanon in April 2006. Chunks of the buildings and arcades are scattered all over the site. Only a few of the enormous stone pillars from the main temple remain upright, but those that do are virtually identical to the ones that hold up the portico of Widener Library, 5,000 miles and 2,000 years away.

Temple at Ba'albek, April 2006