Sergey Kadinsky
Written Works
In a public college such as the City College of New York, it would appear
that every part of the campus is as accessible as admission to the school.
However, there is a hidden infrastructure coordinated by the Physical and Plant
Services Department from their offices in the basement of Compton-Goethals Hall.
George Varian, superintendent of mechanics at CCNY, has worked here since 1972.
He oversees a vast network of pipes, tunnels, towers, and other parts of campus
that have remained unseen by most students for decades.
Often, these locations are hidden in plain sight of the most public facilities
on campus. The front of the Great Hall, in Shepard Hall, appears to be flanked
by an organ on each side. An experienced trespasser knows that in reality, these
are nothing more than pipes with empty, dark rooms behind them. According to
Varian, "There was a beautiful organ here once; it was controlled by air pumps."
Since Shepard Hall's opening, a German-speaking musician regularly tuned the
organ. After his retirement, he tuned the instrument for free. It all came to an
end in the spring of 1969.
"At the time, the campus was being rocked by antiwar riots. The rioters took
over South Campus, and set the organ room on fire," Mr. Varian states. "When the
old man came to tune the organ and found it destroyed, he broke down and cried."
An electronic organ was put in the place of the original air-pumped organ, but
within a decade, it too succumbed to vandalism. Since then, the cathedral-like
Great Hall has remained without an organ, only pipes as a symbol of what once
was.
Above the organ rooms stand two bell towers, one of which contains a bell, the
other, a number of unused rooms. Currently, the bell is automated, controlled
for the past decade by a timed mechanism. This raises the question of whether
the college ever employed a bell ringer. Varian responded, "Before the bell was
automated, for many years there was nobody to ring it." Today, the bell tolls on
any given hour.
Between the bell towers is the apse of the building, on which Edwin Blashfield
painted "The Graduate," a mural dating from 1908. Alongside the central figure
representing "Alma Mater" sit ten other women representing the other great
universities of that time period.
Within the Great Hall, these other universities are also represented in stained
glass windows and medieval-style flags. In his three decades on campus, Varian
has seen plenty of deterioration and neglect. Working on the Great Hall, he made
flag restorations a personal crusade. Originally, the flags had contained the
symbols of the great European universities. In 1917, when the United States
declared war against the German Empire, there were calls to take down the flag
for the University of Heidelberg. A debate between promoters of patriotism and
advocates of free speech ensued, resembling the current campus debate over the
war in Iraq. When these flags were removed for cleaning, they disappeared. The
Great Hall remained without flags for 28 years.
This is where Varian came in, feeling that the Great Hall deserved to have its
flags returned. Unable to find the 54-inch by 7-foot flags anywhere, he
accidentally found his new flags in a furniture store, where couches were
covered with upholstery fabric. "When I found one with the fleur-de-lis symbol,
I knew that we found our flags," Varian states. The material was used to create
new flags, along with new aluminum flagpoles, to replace to worn-out oak poles.
Descending from the Great Hall to the ground floor of Shepard Hall, there is an
octagonal lobby room containing a Civil War memorial dating from 1875 with the
names of seven CCNY alumni who were killed in combat. This was the first war
that involved students and alumni of what was then known as the Free Academy.
Near the Architecture Department's wood shop is a staircase that descends below
ground level to the largest and darkest part of the hidden infrastructure.
Known as the Gothic or North Campus Tunnels, this series of passageways connects
Shepard Hall to the NAC, and all the other Gothic buildings between them. Once
used for men's lockers, these tunnels have not seen crowds of students in more
than 35 years. Varian claims, "Like the Organ Room, these tunnels were also
closed after being damaged in the 1969 campus riots." Richard Slawski, the
Assistant Vice President of Facilities adds, "There are no plans to reopen them,
and I do not envision them ever becoming public again." Lined with heating pipes
along their cracked walls, the tunnels are always steamy. At the same time, they
appear to be swept and maintained by the many construction workers who travel
through them.
Looking outside his office window at Amsterdam Avenue, Slawski also described a
nearby landmark that puzzles not only students but also local residents.
Sandwiched between two apartment buildings is a former firehouse with the name
"City College" written above its doors. Located behind the present Vinegar Hill
firehouse, this five-story curiosity is located on West 140th Street. When asked
if the college ever had its own volunteer fire squad, Mr. Slawski gave a less
romantic description. "The firehouse is used as a mechanical garage for
repairing vehicles that belong to the college."
Where the Gothic Tunnels take an eastward turn towards Baskerville Hall is the
base of a tall pipe, which until 1953 served as the heating plant. "It was a
very dirty place, because it relied on coal," Varian recalls. When he began
working at City College, the government did not respect historical preservation,
and a number of historic buildings on campus were allowed to deteriorate and be
demolished. Remembering the original campus buildings, Varian said, "There used
to be the Old Finley Center on South Campus, which dated back to the days when
Convent Avenue had a convent." He continues, "This building had student clubs
inside it, but with little protest, it was demolished in 1985."
Where the North Academic Center stands once used to be Lewisohn Stadium. "My
parents and grandparents attended concerts there." According to Sydney Van Nort,
Chief of Archives and Special Collections in Cohen Library, "The stadium was
used for a variety of events, including sports, music concerts, and ROTC
parades." Closed in 1973, it was replaced with a building described by the AIA
Guide to New York City as "a battleship stranded among tenements." Architecture
Professor Alan Feigenberg more bluntly describes it as "a big, ugly prison that
discourages anyone who works or learns inside it."
Within these architectural secrets of the City College campus, visitors are
taken back to a time when the campus's designers were more ambitious, creating
tunnels, bells, organs, and flags to match any great European or Ivy League
campus. Today, the tunnels and towers live a secret life as the campus'
underbelly, carrying the heating and electricity that keep the college going.