I traveled this week to Hamilton College in upstate New York for an annual conference of grant writers who work at liberal arts colleges like Carleton. This meeting rotates each year from one college to another, but it’s always both informative and fun, with good speakers and panels as well as tons of well-spent time with friends and colleagues.
Since the host is different each year, the program usually includes a campus tour, which I always enjoy. Colleges are almost by definition beautiful places, and I have a professional curiosity into what particular institutions emphasize in their infrastructure – and how they pay for their buildings and grounds.
Of all the tours I’ve taken, I don’t think I’ve enjoyed one more than Hamilton’s. The guide – a senior economics major – was knowledgeable, funny, and extremely adept at walking backwards, and the campus was stunningly beautiful, both on its own and thanks to the gorgeous autumn weather.
A beautiful footbridge over a beautiful ravine that separates one beautiful side of campus from the other.
The "Rock Swing," a weird but interesting contraption that supposedly can be manipulated in such a way that it carries people standing on the yellow ring up from this basement spot to the second floor of its building. Seems dangerous, which is probably why it’s bolted down now.
The cavernous and gorgeous concert hall.
A memorial (and former gate?) to Kirkland College, a short-lived women’s college that Hamilton spun off in 1968 and absorbed in 1978.
The street-facing side of the amazing new Kennedy Center for the arts.
A dam! Better than Carleton’s dams.
Everywhere you looked on campus, you saw amazing trees like these:
A cool dining hall styled, I think, to look like an Adirondack lodge.
An arresting mobile in a corner of the science building.
The college’s science building was updated recently with a gorgeous new facade, which houses a functional atrium and looked damn good at dusk.
Even the old buildings like this residence hall looked amazing.
A well-situated statue of the college’s namesake, Alexander Hamilton, a real bastard who would’ve visited the campus if not for that whole deal with Aaron Burr.
The bell tower of the college chapel.
A neat sculptural map of campus (as of the 1990s) that by tradition Hamilton students should not walk over, lest they curse themselves to never graduating.
That footbridge again…
What a great way to walk a couple miles.