The Fredösphere

The wifeösphere and I arrived early at that Tuesday night concert I mentioned, so I suggested we take a quick tour of the Rackham Building.  This is the home of the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan, although it is hard to figure out exactly what goes on inside that building.

The Rackham Building contains a 1,200 seat auditorium, an amphitheater, a gorgeous lecture hall (where I sang a recital as a student) and a long study hall.  Nevertheless, the building is so huge there is plenty of space in the non-public areas for -- well, what, exactly?

The building is given pride of place at the end of a mall that stretches two blocks.  (According to an urban legend, Horrace Rackham demanded a certain fountain in the mall be scaled down so it wouldn't block the view of his building.)  The style is a spare classicism with an emphasis on symetry and unassertive art deco detailing.  You enter the lobby, and if you are not headed into the auditorium, your only choice is to take one of massive stairways at the far left or right.  As you ascend, you are welcomed by a wall painting of a towering, betogaed figure with a wise and utterly calm expression.  As you move higher, the detailing becomes sparer and less grand, but only slightly, and when you reach the top floor, home of the lecture hall and amphitheater, you enter a zone that is frankly Greco-Roman, with ionic capitals and barrel vaults. 

I also want to mention the second floor:  to get to the study hall, you must pass through a curious round room located at the heart of the building.  Here you find a bronze plaque commemorating Horace Rackham the Humble and Hard-Working.  One can only fervently wish the old man did not write the copy himself.

On your tour, you will see discrete signs pointing directions to this or that office.  These signs are the only evidence that such offices exist.  If you walk the hallways you occasionally encounter blank, uninviting doors.  It seems clear that allowing these doors to exist at all was a painful concession on the part of the architect, and that if anyone ever presumed to, you know, walk through those doors, it would be simply too much.  Since the building is well lit, I assume it is wired for electricity although I cannot help but regard it as regrettable.

The Rackham Building exists only to support the improvement of disembodied minds, through enlightened activities such as the performance of chamber music or lectures on theosophy.  You expect to spot stately demigods in shimmering robes every time you turn a corner in one of its lonely hallways.  I simply don't believe that any of these "offices", with desks and computers and telephones and filing cabinets, exist anywhere inside the Rackham Building.