Philosophical Hall was constructed on the end of North Colonnade in 1852, in accordance with Joseph Jacques Ramée's plans for the campus. Constituting what is now part of the Arts Building, Philosophical Hall provided space for the departments of Natural Philosophy (Physics and Chemistry). The top floor was occupied by the Physics Department, which included a large lecture-demonstration room, while the first floor contained the Chemistry Department and an analytical chemistry laboratory.
As a Chemistry professor, Maurice Perkins spent a lot of time in Philosophical Hall, and after her husband's death in 1901, Mrs. Perkins noted that the sight of the laboratory door became very painful for her. She also mentioned it being very cold there one winter. The equipment in the laboratory did sometimes provide a useful measure of temperature control; in 1898, after some of her daughter Rose's chickens died, Mrs. Perkins wrote that "Papa and Louis are now going to try some eggs in the Incubator in the Laboratory."
After the Chemistry Department moved elsewhere in 1918, the Physics Department took over both floors and the hall was renamed the Physics Building. The building was greatly expanded in the 1920s and 1940s, and when the Physics Department finally moved out after 119 years, the building was renovated again and given over to the College's previously scattered arts departments. It now currently houses Visual Arts and Dance.
The North and South Colonnades were built in 1815, following Joseph Jacques Ramée’s plans for the campus. Until the construction of Philosophical and Geological Halls in the 1850s, they contained most of the College’s recitation rooms and laboratories. Around the middle of the nineteenth century, North Colonnade held recitation, drafting, engineering model, instrument, and coal rooms, as well as a kitchen for the south faculty house of North College. At the time Mrs. Perkins was writing her letters, the Civil Engineering department occupied almost the entire first floor, and an electrical engineering laboratory was added shortly thereafter.
North Colonnade also had some unusual uses, sometimes serving as a storehouse for packed-up library and geological collections. In 1882, Professor Maurice Perkins added his own stamp by briefly setting up rooms for sick students on the second floor. For decades, the chapel bell also rang from the roof of this building.
After the period of the Perkins letters, a variety of academic departments occupied the building, which also sometimes included dormitory and student activity rooms. A major renovation project completed in 2007 transformed North Colonnade into the Taylor Music Building.
From 1866 until 1907 the south faculty apartment of North College was occupied by William Wells, beloved Professor of Modern Languages and Literature, and his family. Mrs. Perkins rather wished that her own daughter’s family could live there, as it was in a more convenient location, but noted that “I should not grudge the old Professor his life, or his house” (November 13, 1900). “Uncle Billy,” as Professor Wells was affectionately nicknamed, was indeed rather old at the time Mrs. Perkins was writing. In 1895, Mrs. Perkins noted that a reception was being held in honor of his 75th birthday and that the ladies of the faculty were sending him seventy-five roses. “He looks very decrepid; Mrs Raymond thinks that as long as Whitehorne [longtime Professor of Greek Language and Literature Henry Whitehorne, who was then 84] holds out he will not leave” (July 11, 1899). Mrs. Perkins was on good terms with Professor Wells’ wife Alice, who enjoyed photography and took pictures of Mrs. Perkins’s garden among other campus sites. In 1899, Mrs. Perkins reported that a group of Cuban students who were on campus learning English were housed in Professor Wells’s section, to his and his wife’s displeasure.
Professor Wells died in 1907, and after his daughter left the apartment in 1909, it was occupied by various professors, staff members, and administrative offices. It is now part of the Messa Minerva House.
One of the first buildings to be erected on the present campus in keeping with the plan ultimately devised by Eliphalet Nott and Joseph Jacques Ramée, North College opened its doors in 1814. It provided dormitory space, class and recitation rooms, and faculty apartments. Several fraternities got their start in this building, and the College library and several student literary societies were also once housed there. But the main part of North College was its three separate dormitory sections. Although conditions in these dormitories eventually became deplorable, the College did not renovate them significantly until 1902-1903, when electric lighting, steam heat, and improved bathrooms were installed.
Mrs. Perkins sometimes judged the weather based on her ability to see North College from her windows, writing for example, “The fog is so thick that I cannot see the pasture, and North College is a wraith, and this makes the rooms rather dark” (December 2, 1895). Since her time, North College has been renovated numerous times; it is now the home of two of the College’s Minerva Houses, Messa and Wold.
During the period covered by Mrs. Perkins’ letters, the faculty apartment at the north end of North College was occupied by James Truax, then Professor of English Language and Literature. Professor Truax’s professional rivalry with the Perkins’ son-in-law Edward Everett Hale (Jack), Professor of Rhetoric and Logic and later of English, caused considerable tension between their families. Additionally, shortly after Maurice Perkins died in 1901, the Perkins/Hale family became anxious about its future at Union; due to the College’s immediate financial troubles, it seemed impossible to keep both professors at a decent salary. The Board of Trustees appeared to prefer Hale, and President Raymond fought to keep him, but “Jimmy” Truax was a Union alumnus who had served on the faculty for eighteen years. In the end, although the Board decided to keep both professors, Truax suddenly decided to give up the fight. “Jack is in very good spirits as Professor Truax has resigned and his work comes to Jack,” Mrs. Perkins wrote. “Jack will have more work and no more pay, but his position will be settled, and it will be a sort of compensation for many unpleasant things” (July 6, 1903).
Various other faculty members lived in the apartment until 1966. It then served as a dormitory, offices, and meeting rooms. It is now part of the Wold Minerva House.
Completed in 1873, this house overlooking Jackson's Garden was built for Samuel Benedict, a law lecturer at the College, and his wife Julia. Designed by William Appleton Potter (Union College Class of 1864), the house was a large and beautiful structure with Victorian and mock Tudor elements, although neither electric lighting nor modern plumbing were ever installed.
Julia Benedict, daughter of Union College Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy Isaac Jackson, maintained her father's garden after his death and indeed considered it her personal property. As fellow gardeners, Mrs. Perkins and Julia Benedict had a lot in common. However, Mrs. Perkins' letters show she was often quite irritated by Mrs. Benedict, even though she admitted that she was also a hardworking woman, interesting and pleasant to talk to on occasion. One of their frequent disputes was about religion, Mrs. Benedict being a convert to Catholicism and Mrs. Perkins a devout Presbyterian. Mrs. Perkins called their conversations "very polemical and tiresome" and Mrs. Benedict herself "a person who is entirely without consistency or reasonableness" (May 23, 1904). "Her incessant talking, demanding, repeating, made me so dizzy that when she went away I nearly fainted" (December 6, 1903).
The Benedicts held the house under the terms of a lifetime lease. Julia died in 1925, and after the death of Samuel in 1933 the house was razed. Yulman Theater now occupies the place where it stood.
At the beginning of the period covered by the letters, this building, originally called North Hall, belonged to Professor of Natural Philosophy John Foster. One night in 1896, a devastating fire broke out. Mrs. Perkins saw the house “burning fiercely and all the hydrants covered high with snow, and choked with mud, and being the evening of St Patricks, all the firemen tipsy and some of them shamefully drunk…In less than two hours the house was a heap of stone and brick!” (March 19, 1896). Although the house was indeed gutted, it was rebuilt in 1896-1897 using the surviving external walls. Professor Foster died soon after, and Olin Landreth, Professor of Civil Engineering, moved into the house in 1899.
Professor Landreth and his wife had six children, giving the Perkins’ grandson Maurice Hale some playmates. Mrs. Perkins did not always appreciate Landreth himself, however, scoffing when he gave a lecture on art, “I think I shall give a paper on the Beauties of Mathematics!” (December 5, 1896).
After Professor Landreth left the College in 1919, the house was given to other faculty members and later served as the headquarters of the Air Force ROTC, the Beta Theta Pi chapter house, and a social and office space. It is currently named Fero House after Franklin Fero (Union College Class of 1917), whose bequest funded renovations in 1990.
During the time of Mrs. Perkins' letters, this house was the residence of Charles B. Pond, Assistant Treasurer and ferocious debt enforcer under Frank Bailey (Union College Class of 1885 and College Treasurer at the time). Referred to by Charles Waldron (Union College Class of 1906) as the "blunt and rigorous instrument" Bailey used to handle the College's financial difficulties, Pond earned a rather unpleasant reputation at the College. Although students were often amused by "Ducky's" vulgar speaking style and even by the unconventional methods he used to get them to pay their debts, the faculty generally had a strained relationship with him.
Mrs. Perkins' letters suggest her own negative and even hostile attitude towards Pond. She describes him as "a disagreeable man to have words with" (September 14, 1902) and complains about what she regards as his insensitivity and bad taste. In one letter Mrs. Perkins actually mentions shaking her fist at Pond's window while he was away and being relieved to be rid of his "hateful presence" (July 6, 1904).
In 1906, Pond began to build a new house for himself at 17 South Lane, just east of the Psi Upsilon house, and he moved there the following year. He did not get to enjoy it for long, however; he resigned and left the College a year later. His original house on Nott Street was sold, then repurchased by the College in 1936 and had a variety of occupants until it was razed some time around 1963/64.
From 1895 to 1901, the house at 762 Nott Street was occupied by Mrs. Perkins' daughter Rose, her husband Jack, and their children. It was given to Edward Everett Hale Jr. (Jack) as incentive to come to Union, where he became Professor of Rhetoric and Logic and, later, Professor of English. Mrs. Perkins wrote of the renovations that were promised upon their arrival: "The Palmer house will be put in order for them; the roof raised and a room added, and a chimney put in place, and water put in" (March 26, 1895).
The family was generally very pleased with "The Orchard", as the Hale home was known. "The house will be very charming, and the light in the dining room, with the sunlight lying in broad bars under the apple trees, was strangely beautiful" (Oct 3, 1895). Rose had a garden there with lilac hedges, and she kept a cow and chickens. Although the students were generally helpful to Rose, Mrs. Perkins wrote of one occasion when two of them walked around in Rose's absence and awakened her baby. She also reported that someone, perhaps more amusingly, held phonograph concerts on The Orchard's piazza in 1900.
After the death of Professor Perkins, the Hales moved in with Mrs. Perkins. A few unmarried instructors, among others, occupied their former home for a while, but the building was razed at an unknown date sometime in the twentieth century.
The term College Grove formerly referred to several wooded areas on campus, including Jackson's Garden and the area east of where Schaffer Library now stands. A variety of other sites important to campus life in the nineteenth century were also located in the Grove, including the running track and Lover's Lane (the name once given to a tree-lined portion of South Lane).
In 1899, the College, ever in need of money, sold much of the land (a total of 75 acres) that was once extended from the eastern end of campus to the Schenectady Realty Company, a subsidiary of the recently formed General Electric Company. Mrs. Perkins, who was fond of the woods, was saddened by the sale, but she understood its necessity. "We are beginning to sell off our dear land; the Electrics are going to buy all above Union Avenue and make a place like Lewellen or Orange park, with their own nice houses and the ground kept pretty and Park like. If we must sell (and we must) that would be the most agreeable plan [sic]" (March 28, 1899). Union received $57,000 for the land, which included a quarry as well as the woods, and the transaction cleared its immediate debts.
The residential GE Realty Plot to the east of campus retains much of its park-like character and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Over time, the remainder of the College Grove on Union's campus was filled with academic buildings and athletic facilities and fields.
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