Architectural criticism from one of our most venerated elders.

My name was Bartholomew William Obadiah Gibbons III; I designed the second streetcar system to ever transport more than 25% of the population of a middle-sized Southern city per annum; I grew massively wealthy running exploitative soup kitchens charitable organizations during the Great Depression; I died in America’s last Ford Model T accident; but most importantly, I was a summa cum laude graduate of Columbia College in the year of our Lord 1901, and I am absolutely, flabbergasted.

Normally, of course, my spirit is consigned to wander Calvary Cemetery, attempting to complete its unfinished business. (The unfinished business, by the way, is reading the last chapter of Ethan Frome. If anyone has a spare copy they’re willing to lend me, please leave it at any obelisk in the cemetery and I will reward you by making your enemies and rivals uncomfortably chilly.) They let us out once a month or so, time which I normally spend haranguing my descendants about their poor financial decisions through their dreams. But I decided to treat myself this week—one must live graciously, after all—and take a little spectral stroll to my alma mater. To explain my emotions upon my arrival, I will borrow some lines from my favorite poet (me):

O how the slow march of time marches on

It is always marching

With big feet, it marches

In March the month of marching

And also in the other months

Now, I keep up, of course. Lots of things happen in cemeteries: telephone calls, dog walks, breakups, the unspeakable and unnameable. Suffice it to say that when you people talk about “tick tock,” “grusk baby,” or your “Tinder hookup,” I hear it. But never did I expect societal change to reach my university!

The first things I noticed were, of course, the gates. How gothic! How austere! What an unbecoming element of a university campus! Were the ironworkers on laudanum when they wrought these monuments to wastrel design? And they create a chokepoint! I was almost run down by a sophomore in a Clairo sweater on her iPhone 14—a telephone whose camera, by the by, isn’t even that much better than the 13’s—before I realized I don’t have a corporeal form. Get thee hence, gates!

And the trees! It used to be the case that one and one’s thirty closest friends could promenade down College Walk breast-to-breast, announcing the day’s stock figures to citizens and taxpayers. No longer! Now one must trudge, traipse, if I may, weaving between gaggles of gossiping business students, men with ladies’ purses, and someone’s Audi A4. To borrow a phrase I heard once spoken by a youth near my grave, this is not guchy, gang. Get thee hence, trees!

Next, I decided I would phase through Low Library to look for a copy of Ethan Frome. (This is what the kids are calling a “workation.”) Imagine my shock when I see there are no books! Only people at computing machines! One’s curiosity is, of course, a voracious animal, so I took a look at the screen of a woman in a pantsuit. What did it say? “PLAN TO QUICKLY REPLACE JJ’S WITH A TUBE THAT SHOOTS BURGERS RIGHT INTO YOUR MOUTH.” How could they let a woman who splits her infinitives work at this illustrious university? Get thee hence, Low Library!

Frustrated, I floated up the ramp to Philosophy Hall, where I saw an old friend—the insane asylum building. (Little did I know it was occupied by the French!) I turned around and saw another old friend, but… changed, slightly. A strange network of metal piping had lately been built up around Kent Hall. This I studied for quite some time. Then I realized something—it was a monument to yours truly! What at first I thought was mere scaffolding was actually a perfect reproduction of the streetcar system of Columbus, Georgia! It feels truly pog champ to be remembered. You may stay, Kent Hall!

It has been equally lovely and terrible to visit, but now I must be on my way—I’d like to go see Penn Station.

Image via NYPL