I’ve recently had reason to be looking at files about the various pieces of sculpture that have inhabited campus over the years. A couple of weeks ago I was poking around in the box that holds the records for 45° 90° 180° in the Engineering Quad when I found several contact sheets. I got out my loupe for a closer look, expecting to see images of the slabs being installed, but oddly enough it wasn’t there at all:

Interesting.

I flipped the sheet over to check for a date (which wasn’t there, incidentally), and instead found a sticker that said “Photographs by Paul Hester.”( See here and here.) I laughed and started scanning to get a better look. It turns out that he walked all around the quad taking pictures of the whole thing. Now I have record of every angle on one winter day in the early 1980s! Here are a few:

Here’s where the Mechanical Engineering Building is today. I feel like I have pictures somewhere of some of these trees being moved:

And here we can catch a glimpse of the edge of that old Sigma Tau pyramid that cost me so much sleep back in the spring of 2013:

This is just glorious. Glorious!

But you know what? It gets better.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you my theory.

Bonus: