The Hanover Scene
BUILDINGS are fun, at least for those who think buildings are fun, and we are of that persuasion. Someday, when time and energy permit and the hounds of spring are baying a little more loudly, we will hope to conduct the probably small but indubitably select audience of this organ of ill-advised opinion on a tour of the cellars, tunnels, and attics of the College. For the nonce we would report merely on a recent nosing around some of the less publicized nooks of the Baker Library.
One of the happiest summers of our life was spent sitting on the Inn porch watching the new library rise foot by foot over the shambles created by the removal of Jigger Pender's house, the Lambuth and Beetle domiciles, the Graduate Club, and, finally, Butterfield Hall. In the late afternoons, when the clutter of artisans was dispersed, we would poke around on newly poured concrete and recently mazed conduits observing with joy, like some Jehovah's private and prying secretary, the progress of Creation. Our interest was purely unofficial since we had no connection with the committee of Hippo Haskins, Del Ames and others who lavished loving care on the building plans and bludgeoned the professionals into creating the beautiful and effective structure that resulted.
So strange are the ways of Providence that, at a slightly later date, we were intimately attached to Baker as a sort of Head Janitor and general factotum. We probably should delete the first appellation, since Josh Gilbody, a fellow of infinite jest and most excellent fancy, was then and still remains the head janitor sans reproche. (The notion of his being sans penr is too obvious to mention.) In any event, we were recently impelled by some idea but dimly understood to revisit certain odd corners in and about which we had earlier crawled on less rheumatic hands and knees and in just as old pants.
We are not here engaged with the apparent bibliothecal merits of a functional College adjunct that is reputed to lure the entire Princeton basketball team to its stacks and study halls, but rather with some of the hidden quiddities of a collection of sticks and stones. The tower is, of course, the most spectacular feature of Baker. To attain to it, one must first steal an elevator key from some unsuspecting attendant and then steal the elevator from some bewildered visiting scholar. The elevator the McCoy, and not the phantom that we may mention later is guaranteed for six persons or 1000 pounds, and we have warned our hockey team against pulling the goalie in for a mass attack through this channel. The 9th level of the stacks is the end of the line, from which one may mount a brief flight of steps to the 10th level of faculty studies and several other hidden delights reserved for future comment. Another short flight, if one can resist the intrigue of the clicking relays atop the elevator shaft, leads to a large square room filled with miscellaneous junk and old Wilson Hall bookshelves. Here also is a tremendous fan installation designed to ventilate the stacks. Once in the throes of a purity drive, we arranged to subject the building to a periodic use of this contrivance, but forsook the experiment after three desk attendants had been whished up the dumb waiter shaft and out onto the roof.
This is literally the tower room. The large second floor recreational readingroom, called the "Tower Room" because it has a tower above it, has no more claim to the title than our head has to the name the Hat Room. Another flight of steps, now iron and getting tougher, leads us to a choice of doors. One opens into a spacious demesne occupied alternately by college presidents and wasps, where it was once our periodic obligation to disperse the latter in favor of the former. The other choice leads to the only double battery of player pianos in Hanover and, possibly, in the world. This is the eyrie from which the Library chimes are controlled and where, between Fred Longhurst and Walter Durrschmidt, a most elaborate hook-up has been established to play the rolls that have been laced with lacunae by the College officer known as the "Perforator of Music Rolls." There is also a small keyboard for direct manual exploitation, and we claim great credit for resisting numerous vagrant impulses to startle a lethargic campus with one-fingered carolling of tunes in questionable taste. Our only other legitimate plea for indulgence before a final court is our once almost daily display of restraint in not running up various amusing suggestions on the suit of signal flags in the Gymnasium to greet the 90-day wonders as they straggled in each morning to indoctrinate themselves for waging our last hot war.
Higher up the steps are steeper and the surroundings more terrifying, especially in the great cavern dominated by a Poesque machine clicking, fortunately, within a wire-mesh enclosure, and lighted faintly by four huge clock faces leering backward at us. Further on are merely the balcony from which the Class of '79 plays its annual trumpets, and the "Bells," whose padlocked hatch is even more difficult of access than the doors which respond only to the College "steam key." Above them is the "Lantern" whose green 2000-watt bulb shines on festive occasions, and topping all is the familiar weather-vane of Eleazar Wheelock in characteristic pose. His compliance to the fancies of the soft and errant winds of the Hanover Plain is guaranteed by a Halsey Edgerton devised variation of the principle of the grease gun.
Having ascended so high in the tower, and so low in the column, we must delay any possible further observations on this semi-fascinating subject till a more congenial moment.
