Courtyard boulders reveal meaning

Geoff Collins, Associate Professor of Geology, told us about the boulders that are placed around the courtyard.

The architect’s plan for the courtyard included several massive boulders, and I saw this as a fabulous opportunity to put in something meaningful rather than some random rocks.

Matt Evans and I took several trips last year to identify potential rocks to go into the courtyard, and then we negotiated with the landscape architect and the landscape contractors to arrive at a final plan. About half of the rocks came from Betsey Dyer’s family farm a few miles away. The most exciting part was when I helped to supervise the crane lowering in the giant boulders!

The boulders in the courtyard are all local rocks from southeastern Massachusetts, and are designed to reproduce on a small scale some of the important geological structures underlying Wheaton College.

Students who are confused about the relationships among rocks observed many miles apart on field trips can refresh their memory with this representation where the “outcrops” are just a few steps away from each other. Careful observation and mapping of these rocks by an advanced student will reveal a new layer of meaning, hidden in plain sight.

Professor Collins took many photographs of the courtyard boulders as they were deposited with tremendous precision and care. Here is their story as told through his camera’s lens.

The "before" picture

The first truckload of rocks shows up

The first boulder is lowered in

The workers from Greenscape consult with architect Wes Wazni while trying to rotate this boulder through three-dimensional space. The exact orientation of this boulder was important for making logical sense of the geological structure.

Another boulder being placed at exactly the right tilted angle.

The biggest "monster" boulder of granite arrives. It took them a long time to get this chained to the crane, it was incredibly heavy.

The huge granite boulder on its way into the courtyard -- all the other workers on the project stopped to gape and take pictures of this one. I'm sure some of them were nervous about it dropping on the building they just built!

The huge boulder about to be placed.

Another shot of the huge boulder going in. The architect at this point was telling me "it better be in the right place, because once we set it down, it's not going to move anywhere!"

A wider shot of the big boulder going in.

The main large boulder in the center of the courtyard being placed. This is the one that will be the nicest for sitting on during a warm spring day! And it's one of the geologically most interesting rocks.

One of the boulders in its final resting place, showing the tilted layers that mirror the structures beneath Wheaton.

The "after" picture