Wesley College Entombed

Last fall, my colleague (and student) Wyatt Atchley published a photo essay in North Dakota Quarterly based on our work with Wesley College buildings on the campus of the University of North Dakota. You can download this essay (and the entire volume of NDQ for free here) or go and check out the digital exhibit here. For more on the larger Wesley College project, go here.

This past week, Wyatt developed more of film photographs from this project and sent them along to me and agreed to let me post them here on my blog. He took this next group of photos from the Wesley College “bone yard” where that UND has stored the various architectural members of the demolished buildings. Wrapped in plastic, encased in wood, and set on pallets, the glazed brick facades and cornices of the Wesley College buildings are still shockingly modern. Their Classical motifs represent efforts in the contemporary university to preserve parts of their past — albeit out of sight and maybe out of mind—while moving forward.