Just as ancient knowledge is recombined and incrementally built upon to create new knowledge, the most ancient universities are a hodgepodge of old buildings with modern amenities and newer buildings evolved from older styles. So too are many younger schools. The University of Chicago, though a mere 136 years of age, sprang into being appearing five centuries older by pilfering from the architecture of Oxford and Cambridge. Though the buildings of the quad must have appeared somewhat absurd when newly built, a few decades of weathering are not so different from a few hundred when a structure must be kept usable. The quad is thus venerable enough to capture the visitor in a wondrous bubble, as though it were neither in Hyde Park nor of this time and lends the whole University a degree of detached permanence.
Well, almost, because two buildings don’t quite conform to the illusion. The first of these to be built was Levi Hall in 1948, as the University sought to consolidate various administrative functions into a single location. By this point, the Collegiate Gothic style was out of vogue, and to revive it would have appeared anachronistic. Levi Hall was instead constructed as a great hunk of concrete located at precisely the worst possible position that such a boring and incongruous building could possibly occupy. To look down the quad along the east-west axis is to be confronted by a behemoth both unmistakably modern and unremarkably so—Hogwarts, indeed. Its only redeeming quality is that it isn’t the biggest wind tunnel on campus.
Two decades after the construction of Levi Hall, those in charge of designing the quad perhaps realized that a new building would need to cohere with its neighbors, though a Gothic one would have remained out of the question. Pick Hall was thus designed and constructed in 1971 in the Modernist style but vaguely gestures at a Gothic silhouette with its steep roof and packed windows.
Despite these attempts at visual solidarity, Pick Hall stands out far more than Levi Hall does, simply because its appearance is far more idiosyncratic. Along with the Reg, it’s the building that people tend to have the most passionate opinions about on campus, and the fact that they are both stark, geometric buildings is no coincidence. But the monolithic Regenstein stands alone. Pick has neighborly obligations that it does not meet, because unlike the surrounding buildings, it is grim, swollen, and colorless.
Despite these failures, the building does possess many positive qualities. It contains classrooms that are well-equipped but strangely proportioned! It has the most spacious bathrooms on the quad! It has an expansive and well-lit entryway, but only from the street entrance that nobody uses! Perhaps the building is only made strange by the strangeness that surrounds it, but it is hard not to be endeared by Pick Hall’s peculiarities.
Plus, how many of our buildings get their own sculpture? Beside the entrance to Pick Hall is Dialogo, a large, flowing abstract work that is nice to contemplate and moderately nice to sit on. It is also rumored to cast a shadow of a hammer and sickle on International Worker’s Day, though the sculptor has insisted that the effect is unintentional. Instead, it purports to represent “serenity out of strife.” Perhaps, as a serene object just outside the visual strife of Pick Hall, it accomplishes this goal.
This strife, furthermore, is Pick Hall’s best quality, and precisely why I am not too bothered by questions of its beauty. I wouldn’t expect a slaughterhouse to be pretty—in fact, I wouldn’t want it to be pretty because the beauty would only obscure the horrors within. If I had my way, slaughterhouses would all be spiky black buildings with signs painted in blood. Similarly, the fact that Pick Hall has the appearance of a giant evil radiator feeding off the frustrated mental energy of the students trapped within is perversely satisfying. There can be no illusions regarding what goes on in that place. To be welcomed to my Causal Inference midterm in the freezing cold by that monstrous, unsympathetic building was to be told the truth: that the next 90 minutes of my life were going to suck, and that there was precisely nothing I could do but endure the pain. That sort of treatment forces your focus. To suffer in beauty—as one must in most buildings on the quad—is to be mocked by it, but Pick Hall does not coddle you.
While the quad as a whole is idyllic, being the basis of the University’s brand, Pick Hall is more representative of our school as a whole. It is frequently depressing, always thought-provoking, and never boring.
