Education
Document: Sacred and Special Places

By Ethan Andrews
The Republican Journal Reporter

UNITY (March 13): The completion of Unity House, the carbon-neutral President's residence at Unity College, marked the dramatic beginning of a detailed master plan to revamp the entire college campus by 2020.

But during the 2007-08 academic year when the college held preliminary workshops to hash out the coming changes, faculty, students, and staff took a beat to reflect on what they hoped would remain the same.

PDT architects of Portland created maps charting academic areas versus athletic or living areas, transportation routes, and features of the natural landscape around the campus, but none were as subjective as the "sacred and special places" maps, on which workshop participants marked up overviews of the campus with notes on the places important enough to leave as they were.

Map of 'Sacred and Special Places' from the Unity College Master Plan workshops. See link to larger version at the end of this article. (Image courtesy of Unity College)


Unity department head, John Zavodny, who facilitated the workshop, described the master plan as an attempt to make a "physical plant interpretation of the college mission."

The workshop on sacred places "was a way of finding the spots where we wanted to preserve the campus," he said.

As a document the maps offer a chaotic sketch draft of the soul of Unity College. Butterfly meadows, a fire pit, a "shady spot for class," and several notations of "open" or "activity" spaces and dozens of other notes cover the map, scrawled in eight colors of ink. Arrows point in all directions, and zones are circled with no notes as to why.

'Sacred and Special Places' detail (Image courtesy of Unity College)

Douglas Fox, Professor of Landscape Horticulture, recalled that the features appearing on the map generally fit into one of a handful of categories.

Iconic elements like Unity Rocks!, the quasi Neolithic monument at the center of campus, or the stand of birches outside Koons Hall came up again and again with the architects and were shoo-ins with participants, who strongly associated them with the identity of the college.

Unity Rocks!, a ringfort-like gathering place came up again and again in discussions of the sacred and special places on the Unity College campus. (Image courtesy of Unity College Public Relations)

A stand of birches in front of Koons Hall (Image courtesy of Unity College Public Relations)

Other locations were more specific to certain departments: the sugar shack, tended by the Sustainable Sweeteners Club; the forestry competition area at Woodsmen's Field; or a manmade pool, dubbed "vernal" by biology students and used in their research.

Arrows pointing off the edges of the map call out features of the woods around campus. Fox recalled three trees — a hemlock, an ash and a pine that were all deemed significant meeting areas or otherwise important. The ash, he described as "the esoteric mascot of the college." The hemlock is associated with the memory of a student who died.

"Majestic trees tend to have people gather around them," he said.

There is nothing majestic about the parking lot between the library and Student Activity Center, but Fox said it's always been a dry place that catches a fair amount of sunshine. And over the years people have consistently congregated there. Recognizing the second line use, the master plan does away with the parking lot and adds landscaping more fitting of an informal gathering place.

Woodsmen's Field is a place deemed sacred or special by one department. (Image courtesy of Unity College Public Relations)

The 'Coops' — a pair of buildings adapted from remnants of a poultry farm donated at the founding of Unity College were ultimately deemed beyond repair. They do not appear in the master plan. (Image courtesy of Unity College Public Relations)

A popular gathering place centering around a parking lot between the library and Student Activity Center is slated to be landscaped to reflect its use. (Image courtesy of Unity College Public Relations)

According to Fox, not every special place made the cut. A pair of former chicken hatcheries called "The Coops," donated by the Constable Family at the founding of the college, were deemed unsalvageable despite their historical relevance.

As the past was being relegated to the past, the seeds of a future sacred place were being sown in the form of an old streambed discovered running through the center of campus. In the master plan, the stream is revived, providing a natural separation between the residential north end of campus and academic buildings to the south.

"The idea of restoring and vegetating this stream … it immediately became this new sacred space," Fox said. "People could see themselves in that new environment."