Equinox tour sheds light on campus

By Jesse Brown

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The dark and quiet sidewalks on campus that see so much foot action in daylight are empty. The air is cold and crisp. It’s 5 a.m. on Tuesday and the intersection of 14th Street and Jayhawk Boulevard, which would normally be empty, is crowded with more than a dozen people waiting to take part in the autumnal equinox starlight walking tour of Mount Oread led by KU professor Ted Johnson.

Professor Emeritus in French and Italian, Johnson leads an annual tour on the autumn equinox to educate students and anyone willing to brave the early hours about how and why certain campus buildings are constructed in relation to cardinal directions, iconography and astronomy.

photo

Photo by Andrew Hoxey

Ted Johnson, professor emeritus of French and Italian, points out the symbolism in the architecture of Dyche Hall. The building was part of his Autumnal Equinox Starlight Walking Tour of Mount Oread which he leads every year. The tour featured information about the placement of building relative to the positions of stars and the significance of their structures.

“It’s fun to walk about and see how these buildings are set down and how they do relate to the North Star and so forth,” Johnson said.

A few of the buildings that were constructed with Greek and Roman influences, such as the tower on Dyche hall, the north side of Fraser Hall and the north entrance to Watson Library, all align with Polaris, the North Star. Johnson said like Ancient Egypt did with the pyramids and the Sphinx, that some campus buildings are also aligned with stars.

“It’s always going to be lined up,” Johnson said, standing on a manhole west of Dyche Hall. According to Johnson, the North Star will always appear above the tower when standing at this campus location. “These kind of lineups are ones that you find everywhere in ancient Karnak and France.”

Johnson also made other observations about campus buildings. At Stauffer-Flint Hall, he noted the bisected circle above the east entrance and asked for opinions from the group about what that symbolism could mean. A range of ideas came forth, including a representation of the yin and the yang, a closed eye and the cycle of the day split in half with day and night represented.

The subject of the tour is not so visible in the everyday hustle of campus life, but it reveals campus’ hidden mysteries.

“I like seeing the symbolism and everything,” Chris Billinger, WaKenney senior, said of the tour. “I’m an engineering student so this is very different from what I’m normally exposed to, so I like to kind of expand my horizons a little.”

Jenny Curatola, Lansing freshman, is a student of Johnson’s who came to experience the tour.

“It was worth it,” Curatola said. “Some of the stuff was a bit of a review, like we already talked about the Natural History Museum, but I never get tired of hearing him.”

Johnson said he enjoyed guiding the tour because he saw things a student wouldn’t see every day in the daily grind of being a student.

“The main thing is to get people to have a look at the campus in a way that is not just simply being busy going to and from classes but to think about the University in a larger way,” Johnson said.

Professor Johnson also gives a longer tour on Stop Day that covers more ground on campus.

— — Edited by Amanda Thompson

Comments

Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.

Advertisement