Sept. 16, 2005
By Dennis K. Brown
News and Information
The dome is shinier, the entrance is grander, and some roads are much wider.
As is usually the case, the summer brought plenty of construction to the Notre Dame campus, and this year it was evident to even the casual passersby.
Perhaps most obviously, the Golden Dome and statue of Our Lady atop the Main Building have a sparkling new layer of 23.9-karat gold leaf.
The 10th regilding of the famed landmark began in March when a scaffolding system was erected up to and around the dome and statue. The project upset some members of the class of 2005, who objected to scaffolding surrounding the dome and ruining Commencement photos. Student leaders and University officials were able to find a compromise in April and had the scaffolding lowered enough to allow for picture-perfect photography in mid-May.
Artists from Conrad Schmitt Studios of New Berlin, Wis., handled the regilding of the dome and statue, a process that involved the application of 3,500 square feet of the micro-thin gold leaf. The material is so delicate that workers could apply it only in wind-free conditions. The weather throughout the summer was nearly perfect in South Bend, and the project was completed ahead of schedule.
The 123-year-old dome was added to the Main Building in 1882, three years after the building was constructed in the wake of the massive fire of 1879. It stands 197 feet above the ground at its highest point and had been last regilded in 1988. The 17-foot tall, 4,000-pound Our Lady Statue was modeled after a sculpture of the Virgin erected by Pope Pius IX in Rome’s Piazza di Spagna and was a gift from Saint Mary’s College.
In addition to the regilding, workers painted and made repairs to the “drum” on which the dome stands.
Another construction project that is nearly as visible is the creation of a new ceremonial entrance to the University at Notre Dame Avenue and Angela Boulevard. The gateway, which signals Notre Dame Avenue as the University’s principal entrance, is a gently arching composition of granite and limestone piers connected by wrought iron fence and featuring the University seal on each side of the avenue.
The new entry is at one end of a major road construction project on the southern boundary of the campus. Throughout the summer, workers realigned Angela and Edison roads between Notre Dame Avenue on the west and Ivy Road on the east. The old, winding roadway between those points has been removed, and all four lanes of the new stretch opened Aug. 15. In addition to widening the roads, the project allows for the eventual addition of a park-like public area immediately south of the new DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts.
A second phase of road construction, which began in the summer and is continuing, will widen Ivy Road on the eastern edge of campus between Edison and Douglas Roads. The roadway will become a major north-south corridor around Notre Dame, replacing Juniper Road, which will be closed on campus in order to improve safety for pedestrians and provide the University with open space for future development.
As if the south side of the campus wasn’t busy enough, still another project was completed this summer at Angela and Notre Dame Avenue.
Raclin-Carmichael Hall, just barely off campus at the southeast corner of the intersection, is a joint project between Indiana University Medical School and Notre Dame. The facility is the new home of the South Bend Center for Medical Education – an initiative in which IU medical school students complete their first two years of training at Notre Dame – and the University’s W.M. Keck Center for Transgene Research. The building includes a 250-seat auditorium for lectures and programs for the med school and the local medical community, as well as classrooms, a student study lounge, teaching laboratories and labs for Notre Dame scientists.
Keck Center researchers focus on identifying and characterizing genes involved in hemostasis as they relate to regulation of blood coagulation and other diverse physiologies and pathologies.
Another major initiative for the sciences is the ongoing construction of the Jordan Hall of Science on Juniper Road north of the Joyce Center. Underwritten with a leadership gift from Trustee John W. “Jay” Jordan, the 201,783-square-foot building will include 40 undergraduate laboratories for biology, chemistry and physics; two 250-seat lecture halls; a 150-seat multimedia lecture hall; two classrooms; 22 faculty offices; offices for preprofessional (pre-med) studies; and a greenhouse, herbarium and observatory. The hall will be completed next summer.
A less obvious, but no less important, project is the current renovation of the Student Health Center, which includes improvements to windows, roofing and masonry, a new electrical system and generator, and new mechanical systems. During the renovation, which should be completed by December 2006, the health center is being housed in the old security building and the counseling center has been relocated to the old Post Office.
Details on another prominent new building, the Guglielmino Athletics Complex, are available elsewhere in this program.