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biological sciences. Bruce Arneill ’53 and his colleagues at SLAM, architects with considerable laboratory experience, were asked to plan an expansion that would not require a shutdown through construction. Their solution, completed in 1999, was to envelop the old building in a new one and then fuse the two. The fossil wall in the lobby was conceived by the faculty as a way to engage visitors directly in the wonder that is basic to science and in what they called science’s “intimate combination of beauty and function.” THE ESTHER EASTMAN MUSIC CENTER (2004) pushed the envelope of Main Building in more ways than one. In 2001, Centerbrook, the much-honored Connecticut architectural firm, was chosen to realize a program developed by the Hotchkiss community for a new performance space, practice rooms, green rooms, meeting space,
offices, and recording studio. The firm’s design – four levels that extend from Walker Auditorium like the scroll of a violin turned on its side – uses glass walls to create a conservatory in both senses of the word. In the Katherine M. Elfers Hall, a memorial gift by William Elfers ’37 and William R. Elfers ’67, performers and audiences delight in concerts that include views of the pastoral landscape. The Esther Eastman Music Center, which has sensuous interior spaces and finishes, is named for the grandmother of principal donor Barbara Walsh Hostetter ’77. In December 2007 it was the first Hotchkiss THE ESTHER EASTMAN MUSIC building to receive LEED (Leadership in CENTER; MONAHAN DETAIL Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the United States Green Building Council. MONAHAN B UILDING (1938, 1954, 2007), the former gymnasium, has become Main’s farthest satellite, with a combination of academic and administrative functions. One of six buildings designed by campus architect Henry F. Waterbury (page 9), the gymnasium honored the school’s longtime athletic director, Otto F. Monahan, and served as an athletic facility from 1938 to 2002. In their book about Delano & Aldrich, Peter Pennoyer and Anne Walker describe Monahan’s Georgian facade as “punctuated with a monumental recessed entrance niche and textured with brick dentils, spandrel panels, and limestone medallions depicting athletes,” adding, “the simplicity of the design was powerful and elegant.” A trustees’ vote in 2002 to demolish Monahan stirred alumni
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