The Hanover Scene
AT this season, when brilliance is beginning to touch the surrounding hills, it may not be inappropriate to spare a word to the coming of color to Hanover. What we have in mind, however, is not the obverse of the ivied walls, but their insides. In the old days, when paint was purchased by the tank car and cost 78¢ a barrel, one thought twice before paying 79¢, and the interior walls of all college buildings were splashed with a uniform institutional tan, with dadoes in oubliette for dormitory corridors. A single exception was made when Baker Library was built and a really tough building committee enforced its will (though not as concerned the elimination of 25-watt bulbs) and added a pleasing smidgeon of pink to the walls, with the trim done in Limpopo.
Not long back, however, a general plant face-lifting was inaugurated and, among other details, minor executives were allowed a choice of colors when their offices needed repainting - like the addition of a rug in lieu of a salary raise. We happened to be selected as one of the early guinea pigs for this experiment and, as such, decided to go whole hog. Inspired by the ideal of the Renaissance "compleat man," we thought to test the extent of human endurance, and came up with a mise enscene in circus-wagon yellow and tired eggplant. This took some living with, and we have noticed that later occupants of that space have shifted to sea foam and mermaid's fin.
The Administration Building took heart and burgeoned into Italian Sky, lemon, and amethyst, and bit by bit faculty departmental headquarters (FDHQ) have begun to show a little pink nose or its equivalent. Meanwhile, the Gym again took the bit in its teeth and installed a luxurious powder room in solid old rose. The football offices have just been re-done in lime; the ticket office went in for sauterne, and the assistant director for chartreuse the rogues.
Before long this chromatization, like a dome of many colored glass, stained the white radiance of the student body, and dormitories began to feel the auroral warmth. The first was Cutter Hall, which was being especially prettied for an especial experiment in group living. Then one by one corridors in other dorms were worked over into pale green, and the rooms were done in pearl. But the most startling innovation came when occupants were allowed to express their individualities with a choice of color for one wall of their rooms. Some of the options were: agate, aspidistra, avocado, beryl, bile, blancmange, blood, blush, boysenberry, cactus, carnelian, chalcedony, chrysoprase, cinnabar, Colorado, creosote, Florence Harding blue, gamboge, Gulden's, gumbo, jasper, leek, madder, milk-choc-olate, morocco, myrtle, nasturtium, oyster, prawn, putty, skull, vinegar, watermelon, wisteria, wurst, and zinc.
One wonders at the dilemma facing roommates of disparate personalities - would an English and an Eccy major, for example, have to settle on puce, as a compromise between nuance and reality? In any event, all this has, without question, thrown warm gules on the fair breasts of the undergraduates and, as much of the work is done necessarily in term time, many students have found it restful to watch the painters at their unprecipitate tasks.
A special case has arisen in Wilder Hall, the recently enlarged and refurbished home of the Physics Depart- ment. Here, the splitters of atoms and infinitives, working insanely in their secret underground laboratory - or possibly a sly sorcerer's apprentice from the Humanities, seeking to discredit an over-technical society - have concocted a color scheme designed to startle the most lethargic nuclear neophyte. The halls are yellow; the faculty conference room is alternate red and brown; and the new student library is research-tan and off-white, with Williamsburg blue trim and bookcases.
But the College has done itself proud in redecorating Rollins Chapel - that not entirely unentrancing granite pile of early water-works Romanesque. Through its heavy outer doors, painted the fire-red of cherubim's faces, one comes upon an interior airy enough to stifle any whose only prior experience has been limited to the pre-matinal gloom associated with clanging bells and the crunch of feet on snow. The general effect is of ivory, and apes and peacocks, sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. Perhaps the monkeys and refreshments are poetic license, but surely, somewhere on the wings of the little shrimp-mouthed cherubs singing voiceless praises from the joints of the roof beams, there is a suggestion, too, of topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
