Final Paper

What Lies Beneath

By Erica Stern

The University at Albany campus, made up of all Stone's signature features.

 An old fashioned brick building with vines of ivy creeping up the side, acres of green ripe with flowers, students resting beneath the shade of an ancient evergreen with their textbooks and notes sprawled around them. This is what many people envision when they think of a well-known and prestigious university. The University at Albany’s campus could not be further from that vision. Instead, you find a sea of gray, with buildings made of stone, and the only trees or flowers you’ll find are those planted on the quads, and in between the academic buildings. One thing about the university that stands out is its unique architectural design, which according to students doesn’t make any sense at all.

“It’s because it was originally built for an Arizona campus,” student Nicole Vouzianas replies when asked why the campus seems so unfit for a university in upstate New York. “And that’s why we have a fountain, it should have been a swimming pool in Arizona.” These are just two of the many rumors believed by thousands of students who attend the University at Albany. One of the biggest questions students have about their campus is the purpose behind the underground tunnels. “That I cannot help you with,” Vouzianas admits. “But I definitely am happy they’re there.”

Although the roof of the podium provides relief from the rain and snow Albany so often experiences, it does little to provide shelter from the bitter cold and howling winds. Once the notorious tunnels were discovered, there was little anyone could do to prevent students from using them as shelter from the harsh weather. The tunnels provide an underground pathway to anywhere a student may need to go on campus, such as the academic buildings, the campus center, even directly to the lecture centers. A network of underground tunnels connecting to different locations may seem highly unusual for a college campus, however, once you understand the architect behind it all, it begins to make a little more sense.

Edward Durell Stone

Edward Durell Stone was an internationally famed architect, widely known and appreciated for his signature style of bold and modern design, always accompanied by soaring colonnades, monumental towers, massive domes, and decorative fountains. The campus was designed to be attractive to the students who would one day attend the university, but each characteristic of Stone’s designs also has more than one value. The clear domes placed throughout the canopy on the podium are meant to allow natural light onto the podium, and the roofs are designed with grilles along the edges, forming a unified canopy and allowing a shadow to be cast on the podium adding visual variety. All of these architectural designs result in a dramatically different look from a traditional campus.

Pakistani Institue of Nuclear Science & Technology

This type of design was Stone’s signature, and is seen in different places all over the world. The United States Embassy in New Delhi, India and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C have a strikingly similar structure to the university’s campus, built with a raised podium, supporting colonnades, and a fountain displayed around the building. The most significantly similar structure to the Albany campus is the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology, which is the same shape as our campus, with the fountain in the center, and even has the large, tower-like structure within the fountain which resembles what students refer to here as “the giant cigarette.”

U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing
Arts in Washington D.C.

The most important characteristic of these buildings that Stone was sure to use in all his designs was the raised podium. Albany’s university archivist Geoff Williams has been working in the university libraries since 1987, and knows all there is to know about the layout, construction, overall history of the university, and quite a bit about Stone as well. “He just hated cars,” Williams explains. “Seeing them from the podium was a distraction to the design of the campus in general.” This is why when Stone designed the uptown campus in the early 1960s, he included only one parking lot, which today is known as the faculty lot on Dutch Quad, and made it far enough from the podium that it was not visible from most points. Although this solved the issue of seeing any cars, it raised a whole new issue of getting books, desks, and other supplies to the academic buildings. Stone had foreseen this issue before construction began, which led to the design of “underground roadways” for deliveries to buildings and rooms within the podium. There was a loading dock built beneath the Social Science building so trucks could drop off the supplies, where a special vehicle would then easily carry the deliveries to the building in which they belonged through the tunnel entrance.

The University Archivist, Geoff Williams

As soon as the weather began to turn to those brutal winters Albany is known for, the use of the tunnels became extremely popular. Stone never envisioned these tunnels would be used for people, but there was little to be done once they had been discovered. “Even though they weren’t built for civilians, faculty couldn’t keep students out in the cold,” Williams explained, so eventually instead of prohibiting the use of the tunnels, the university instead provided security to monitor students in the tunnels. The only other intended use of the tunnels Stone thought of besides storage and a path for deliveries was being used as a bomb shelter. Being built in the 1960s, a time where the world was experiencing war, it was not uncommon for facilities to be built with atomic bomb shelters. According to Williams, there are a couple of rooms located on the quads, and some connected to the tunnels that to this day are stocked with canned food and water in case of an emergency. “The water may in fact be contaminated, who knows if they’ve ever replaced the original stock!” Williams joked.

The tunnels: an underground passage made of concrete.
Click here for a better look at what the tunnels look like.

Another popular rumor circulating throughout the student population is that there used to be tunnels connecting straight to the basement of the tower on each quad, but were closed down due to the danger of being attacked in the dark, narrow passages. Williams was able to clear up that rumor by explaining that the only passage connecting to the quads is to store the steam tunnels. There are pipes in the tunnels that transfer water, as well as air from the heating and cooling systems to each individual building on campus. These pipes connect to the boiler and steam system that are used by the dormitories on each of the quads, and were most definitely never used by students. “These too were never intended for people,” says Williams. “They are very small, and are almost too tight a fit for maintenance which is why these passageways always

have been, and continue to be locked on both ends.”

The busting of a steam pipe is not the only safety hazard that lies within the tunnels. Dimly lit, with numerous dark corners and large objects to hide behind, the tunnels are the ideal location for an attacker. Being a public university, it is not difficult for individuals besides students or faculty to gain entrance to university facilities, or the tunnels. This alone raises a huge concern of safety, and with underground tunnels to seek as refuge; an attacker has little in their way. There have been incidents reported in the past, but nothing violent or dangerous enough to close the use of tunnels completely. Just recently though, on April 5, 2012 an incident was reported to UPD, and an email was sent out by the Chief of Police to all UAlbany students and faculty. The female student who fell victim to the incident reported that she was walking in the tunnel near the Social Science dock around 7:30 pm when an unknown assailant grabbed her; thankfully, she was able to escape without any injuries. The University Police Department investigated the case, but even with security to police and keep watch in the tunnels, it is nearly impossible to prevent every incident such as this one from occurring.

Signs that were later added to prevent people
from getting lost in the tunnels.  

Incidents like this is what led to the increase of security in the tunnels. There are security guards to monitor students to make sure they stay safe, and to prevent students from vandalizing the walls more so than they already have. Since prohibiting tunnel use has been unsuccessful and even deemed unnecessary, why hasn’t the university improved the appearance of the tunnels? “They first and foremost will have to be supply tunnels,” Williams says. He also explains that in order to make the tunnels more aesthetically pleasing, the massive pipes would need to be hidden from view. Covering them would make it too difficult for them to be serviced, and putting up a wall to hide them completely would make the tunnels too narrow for the special vehicles that carry supplies. The only improvement that has been made to the tunnels was the addition of signs by each academic building entrance in order to prevent people from getting lost.

It’s obvious that the University at Albany campus is unique in a number of ways, but the most interesting, even mysterious aspect of the campus remains to be the tunnels. Despite the truth revealed behind the many rumors, there are still numerous individuals who are intrigued and curious about the underground passageway, and rightfully so. With the many improvements and construction being done at the university, many students wonder if the tunnels will receive some sort of improvement; but according to Williams, the tunnels will remain the way that they are, exactly as Stone intended them to be.