Looking out the window....
Sep. 25th, 2006 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1During idle times at work, I often walk away from my cubicle, go into an empty office, and look out the window. From my window, I can see Wright State University and the neighboring woods. Soon I shall be seeing color in those trees.
The past few days, my mind has flashed back to a similar view, when I was still a student at SUNY/Buffalo. I'd often go into the Undergraduate Library on the first floor of Capen Hall and settle down among the group of Nemschoff modular chairs at the north end. And I'd gaze out the window. I'd see the weather, the traffic, the woods, and the Joseph Ellicott Complex -- an interconnected series of 38 buildings which contained both dormitories and academic classrooms.
Looks like an alien city, doesn't it? It would make for an interesting backdrop for a futuristic SF TV show. Those of us who went to UB called it the Emerald City, Legoland, and some of us called it home. (I commuted, but I spent two nights there as part of freshman orientation. I didn't get any sleep there.) I could see it from my high school. I learned how to drive in one of the nearby parking lots during the summer. And I later played softball for the Computing Center team at a nearby playing field.
It was built in the early-to-mid 1970s. There are 6 "quadrangles" of dormitories, connected by a 3-story, L-shaped building. It's made of square brick. I tried to start an urban legend that it was made with stale Food Service brownies, but it didn't take off. The Katherine Cornell Theater, where Mark Russell used to perform his bimonthly shows on PBS, is part of the Complex.
With all the overhangs and towers, it's easy to speculate if the prototype was rendered in Lego blocks. If not, I'm sure that there would be a fair amount of peple who would be interested in building a scale model of the Ellicott Complex in Lego.
As I look out the window now, I'm missing those times. I miss walking through the Complex, from the Fargo Rec Center to the Student Club to the Browsing Library to the Wilkeson Pub. I miss visiting friends who lived in the dorms. I miss the College of Mathematical Sciences. I miss the bus ride through the tunnel on the ground floor of the Complex. I miss walking along the terrace in spring, seeing lots of students sunbathing in April or May. And I miss how much simpler my life was back then.
The past few days, my mind has flashed back to a similar view, when I was still a student at SUNY/Buffalo. I'd often go into the Undergraduate Library on the first floor of Capen Hall and settle down among the group of Nemschoff modular chairs at the north end. And I'd gaze out the window. I'd see the weather, the traffic, the woods, and the Joseph Ellicott Complex -- an interconnected series of 38 buildings which contained both dormitories and academic classrooms.
Looks like an alien city, doesn't it? It would make for an interesting backdrop for a futuristic SF TV show. Those of us who went to UB called it the Emerald City, Legoland, and some of us called it home. (I commuted, but I spent two nights there as part of freshman orientation. I didn't get any sleep there.) I could see it from my high school. I learned how to drive in one of the nearby parking lots during the summer. And I later played softball for the Computing Center team at a nearby playing field.
It was built in the early-to-mid 1970s. There are 6 "quadrangles" of dormitories, connected by a 3-story, L-shaped building. It's made of square brick. I tried to start an urban legend that it was made with stale Food Service brownies, but it didn't take off. The Katherine Cornell Theater, where Mark Russell used to perform his bimonthly shows on PBS, is part of the Complex.
With all the overhangs and towers, it's easy to speculate if the prototype was rendered in Lego blocks. If not, I'm sure that there would be a fair amount of peple who would be interested in building a scale model of the Ellicott Complex in Lego.
As I look out the window now, I'm missing those times. I miss walking through the Complex, from the Fargo Rec Center to the Student Club to the Browsing Library to the Wilkeson Pub. I miss visiting friends who lived in the dorms. I miss the College of Mathematical Sciences. I miss the bus ride through the tunnel on the ground floor of the Complex. I miss walking along the terrace in spring, seeing lots of students sunbathing in April or May. And I miss how much simpler my life was back then.
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