Memorial Hall is one of my favorite buildings on Harvard campus. It is a gorgeous looking structure built in Ruskinian-Gothic style, with an imposing tower that looks beautiful by day and mysteriously eerie by night. And it is old, like a lot of things in Boston are. Old being a very relative-to-rest-of-USA thing, of course. But a touristy tour around town will lead to the guide (yes, that would be me) pointing out things and remarking — Looky at that li’l school right there? Yeah yeah, that black gate. That’s Haah-vad. The oldest university in the country. Or .. See that stretch of green? Bawst’n Caw-mun. Oldest cattle-grazing ground in the country. What’s that? No no, the cows will come back in summer. No really. I promise. Anyway, soon it drives people up the wall, leading to situations like this — a visiting friend and talented wiseass, pointed to a squirrel in the Harvard Yard and curiously asked if it was the oldest squirrel in the country. No, we replied. But his great-grandpa was. Died in the Civil War, he did, we said, nodding solemnly. They built a memorial for him too. And then we pointed to Memorial Hall.

Memorial Hall was built between 1865 and 1878, to honor the Harvardians who had fallen while fighting for the Union in the American Civil War. (What? You thought I was kidding about the squirrel?) The interior of the hall has a marble-floored transept with walnut paneling, large stained glass windows featuring the work of several prominent artists, and a sixty-foot-high, Gothic-style vaulted ceiling, with metal chandeliers. Yep, this is a picture of one of them, taken from directly below it.

Memorial Hall is also home to Sanders Theatre — originally a commencement hall, that has since played host to a number of notable figures like Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King in the past and the Ig Nobels in the present. And then of course, there is Annenberg Hall, one of the most impressive and awe-inspiring spaces on Harvard campus. Sorta reminds you of the main hall at Hogwarts, only Annenberg Hall is real and infinitely more impressive!

Okie, enough yak yak. Enjoy the linkfest. And look ma, no flowers!

Some tourist-guide type background information on the church —

Trinity Church is located in the middle of Copley Square, nestled between the Hancock Tower (I M Pei’s famous and controversial creation) and the Boston Public Library. Built between 1873 and 1877, it is considered a classic example of French Romanesque architecture in the United States — a style now known as Richardson Romanesque after the church’s architect Henry Hobson Richardson. The church also boasts of gorgeous stained glass murals by American artist John La Farge. If interested, checkout this slideshow on the church’s website that gives you a virtual tour of the insides.

For this photograph, I had a chance to try out Robb Carr’s much-talked-about-on-the-web B&W conversion technique in Adobe Photoshop. Robb Carr, considered one of the master retouchers in the industry, works for the reputed photographer Greg Gorman. Here’s the how-to described by Andrei Herasimchuk on his Design By Fire blog or if you prefer, a nice li’l Photoshop action.

No more Image » Grayscale or Channel Mixing when creating B&W photographs from digital color. Yay!

Anyhoo, so this book, has a really fascinating image on the cover. A piece of paper held to the table by pins, while a hand is busy sketching the cuff of a sleeve. The sleeve extends to the drawing of a hand, that having emerged with a form of its own, is in turn, drawing the cuff on the first hand’s sleeve. Classic chicken/egg cyclic funda!

Many years later I learnt more about the creator of this fascinating work of art — M C Escher, one of the most famous graphic artists of the 20th century. While he created his share of realistic art, he is perhaps most famous for his seemingly impossible structures. His experiments with infinite space, relativity, spirals, mirror images et al are fascinating for artists and mathematicians alike. In fact, the phrase ‘mathematical art’ is often used to describe his work. In particular, Drawing Hands is one of Escher’s most recognized prints, a classic conflict between flat surface and three-dimensional space.

Anyways, long story short, seeing the image made me feel a compelling need to write about it, hence this blog :)