Buildings – Play

The Bell Tower of Western, Middlesex College

Home to the Mathematics and Computer Science departments, Middlesex College building is a dominating figure on campus. Situated at the bottom of the hill to where University College stands, its distinctive collegiate gothic architecture with clock and bell tower is the campus landmark.

The featured photograph conveys the imposing height of the building, but it does little to demonstrate its breadth. If you can imagine two wings, scaled to match the clock and inwardly reaching like long arms to embrace the campus, then you have a sense of Middlesex College.

Middlesex College opened in 1960 as a home for the Department of History. According to the building’s Wikipedia page, the tower houses five bells, each eight feet in diameter and weighing 400 lbs. However, the bells no longer ring, and were decommissioned in 2007 due to high refurbishment costs. They are “tuned to E, B, E, F and G#”.

September 17, 2021. Middlesex College. London, Ontario

November 28, 2021. University of Western Ontario. London, Canada.

The photograph above shows the trees that have sheltered between Middlesex and University College. There is a mix of planted specimens and a stand of natural growth that can be found on the lower right, across the road that intersects the pathway.

The front lawn of Middlesex houses a stand of black walnut trees. Previous to this space becoming a university, it was used as a farm, and these trees were planted here at that time. (The school’s founding date is March 7, 1878.) The story I learned was the row of walnut trees followed the road entering the farm and is all that remains of the farm itself, although there are trees on campus which predate farming in the region.

When walnut seeds fall from the trees, they are covered in a coarse green skin encapsulating a fibrous flesh. Inside is the walnut in its shell. As the seeds lie on the ground through the autumn, the flesh blackens and rots away. In early winter only the nut remains, and this is when the squirrels take advantage. The husk is not a nice thing to handle, as it stains black everything it comes in contact with and can be irritating to the skin.

While dropping from the tree, each seed is a heavy little ballistic that falls from some very tall trees. It is a bit risky to sit, or even walk, under them when the breeze picks up.

University College on the High Ground of Campus

After giving a proper introduction to the Physics and Astronomy building last post, I thought I should give you a good look at the old gal’s rivals, the University College Building and Middlesex College (next post).

Home to Western’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the UC building looks down hill toward the Thames River (yes, unfortunately the current names to things in this area of Canada are associated with places in England; obviously, no one was anticipating the havoc it would cause with Google). The original downtown of London in Canada, with its grand first homes, is across the river and further south. Coming up from town to the university, you would know you had arrived when you crossed the bridge and were greeted by University College. Built in the 1920’s, University College is a massive building embedded on the high ground and dominated by a castle-like lookout tower.

University College recently underwent a massive $34 million renovation, with details available here.

Renovations from the inside out also included new gardens and outdoor seating, which replaced a car parking lot. Some trees around the building were also removed to increase the amount of interior light, especially on the left side of the tower.

Undisturbed by the work is an extensive collection of planted trees. It is possible to stroll the immense lawn to Middlesex College under a shady avenue of amazing maples, walnuts, oaks, chestnuts and others.

Looking back toward University College. Fall 2021.

In this area are some of the first trees planted on campus. I think the photo below might be of the famous self-seeded apple tree that is thought to have predated the campus. It appears to have had a long life, and despite its diminished appearance it is maintained and kept on site near University College.

The long view toward the main campus:

After the bridge, entering the main campus. September 2021.

From across the bridge, exiting the ‘residence row’. April 2018.

The Watching Faces of the Physics Astronomy Building

After introducing Jane’s Garden in last post, I wanted to share another building on campus that has gained an addition to its old form. It is the Physics and Astronomy Building. Sadly for it, sharing a corner on campus with the impressive University College that looks like a castle and Middlesex College with a gothic-style clock tower, the original Natural Sciences building seems a little plain at a distance. This changes, however, when you get up close. Considered the better-built of the campus’s two 1920’s buildings, the Physics and Astronomy building is filled with quirky details you have to search for to find.

Opened in 1924, the original Natural Sciences and University College buildings are the two oldest academic buildings existing at Western today. When we arrive at Physics and Astronomy 98 years after its opening, we are greeted by a set of original carved faces like the one shown above. On the featured image, the carved heads appear only as dots along the lower banks of windows flanking the front entry. There is a bit of information about the carvings posted inside the building shown below.

Each of the side doors and the main entrance are also decorated with equally surprising carvings. A closer look at one of the smaller side doors is shown above. We can see leaves, flower buds, a sun with a face, and is the middle one in the bottom photo to the left a pie?

Like the Biological and Geological Sciences building, the Physics and Astronomy building contains an inner courtyard, but here a $25 million renovation in 2012 converted the space to make it interior to the building. Much of the exterior façade was kept. The new space serves for functions and events, and there are a small number of tables for students to use.

In the featured image at the top we see four rows of windows, the lower one appearing to sink into the ground. From where the interior photos were taken (seen below), we are in the middle of the building on the second level. In the next photo we can see down to the lower floor, and the top of the photograph shows a staircase leading to the upper levels. The last photo shows the upper level.

Exterior landscape renovations were completed in 2021, connecting the exterior space of University College and Physics and Astronomy is a large pedestrian avenue with exterior seating.

Sources: Wikipedia.

Anywhere a Garden

The Western University campus has an amazing collection of trees. I showed off two Magnolias in a recent post. The perennial collection, on the other hand, has fallen victim to digging squirrels and foraging geese, so often what comes up also disappears before much happens.

More successful gardening happens in raised beds, like the purple and white tulips at University College. Or, on the wall below.

Tulips in school colours at University College building. May 16, 2022.

University of Western Ontario. November 10, 2021.

And hidden away in the shelter of the Biological and Geological Sciences building, is Jane’s Garden. It is a secret spot that one finds only if happening past it. Sheltered amidst the building itself, it is a fully enclosed outdoor space.

Jane’s Garden, named for Dr. Jane Bowles, a former biologist and professor at UWO.

As can be seen in the photo above, the walls suggest the space was not fully enclosed when the building was first erected, and that a later addition caused the garden’s separation from the exterior of the campus. This is not entirely uncommon at UWO, where one mode of expansion has been to annex outdoor spaces that formerly separated buildings and join them together. Here, the space was not made part of the indoors, but became a garden protected by multi-storied walls.

Anyone familiar to gardening has probably observed that a particularly well-sheltered spot can serve to cultivate plants that normally do not thrive in the given climate zone. I suspect this is the case here as well, given that spring-flowering snow drops appeared around March 18, and then in the rest of London a few weeks later. So perhaps it should not have been so surprising to see that redwood trees have been growing here.

According to Wikipedia, the Dawn Redwood is known by fossil record to have grown in the northern hemisphere, and was thought to be extinct. When only a few specimens were discovered in China in the 1940s, seeds were collected and distributed to botanical gardens throughout China and world-wide. Today it is an endangered species in the wild, but has been preserved through cultivation.