BRADY: BU dream cut short by reality

Pride is not a word that we Boston University students use often in reference to our school. There are many possible explanations for this, but I've always found it instructive to look to history and see how the aspirations and failures of past leaders have shaped the present.

Daniel Marsh, president of BU from 1926 to 1951, almost single-handedly picked up the disparate units of Boston University, which then stretched from Cambridge to the South End, and plucked them down on the banks of the Charles River. He was a former Methodist minister and an eternally optimistic man, whose lifelong dream is largely responsible for the BU that we know today.

Marsh was a nut about history and symbolism. He intended for Boston University to be the Oxford University of Boston, as opposed to Harvard, which clearly owed much to Cambridge University (if our campus had been built to plan, it would have strongly resembled the University of Chicago, also modeled on Oxford). The new campus would include several interconnected courtyards, all opening up to the Charles River. But Marsh's biggest dream was the gigantic central administration tower that he wanted to anchor the campus. This tower would be no great leap forward in architecture, but instead, a great leap back.

St. Botolph's Church in Boston, England is primarily known for its enormous tower, which stands at 272 feet and is known, modestly, as the Boston Stump. The tower took slightly less than a century to complete, with work beginning around 1425. Marsh wanted to pay tribute to the original Boston by building a faithful replica of the Stump on the riverside of the chapel. Eventually, this building needed a purpose other than being large and impressive, so Marsh envisioned it as a headquarters for the BU administration. The planned building became known as the Alexander Graham Bell Tower, honoring the inventor of the telephone and former BU professor (it would, of course, include bells). Why undertake such an ambitious project? The only reason is pride.

But gradually, over the decades, the Bell Tower morphed from a plan to a dream. The plan's ambition rang true in the Roaring Twenties but was crippled, fiscally and spiritually, by the Great Depression. Still, the plans for the tower were kept alive until the 1950s, when Marsh's successor, Harold Case, quietly killed the project. Kathleen Kilgore's 1991 history of BU, Transformations observes, "In the plans for the new campus, the tower appears as a shadowy image rising eerily behind the solid chapel, real only to those like Marsh, who 'see visions and dream dreams.'"

Arguably, the tower was killed by Storrow Drive. Starting in 1928, the Commonwealth seized 130,000 square feet of land along the river to build the parkway. BU successfully sued for proper compensation, but the damage was done. The Charles went from the university's front step to its back door, and our campus gradually drowned in a sea of asphalt, hemmed in by highway on all sides. The grand plans of Daniel Marsh were doomed.

Marsh's dream was perversely realized a few yards away with the construction of the School of Law tower, which began in 1962. You don't have to be an expert in architecture to recognize the Law Building as what it is: one of the ugliest features of the Boston skyline, which is no easy feat. It's amazing that the plan for a replica of the beautiful Boston Stump eventually devolved into the hideous Law Building.

Another interesting tidbit that I discovered in my research is that students picked the Boston terrier as BU's mascot in 1923, edging out - get this - the bull moose. A forceful, majestic creature of the woods versus a small, yippy dog? I'm not sure I agree with their choice. Perhaps our hockey team would have more success if, instead of Rhett the Boston Terrier, they were cheered on by Teddy the Bull Moose, rallying the Antlerheads at home games.