Sarah Madry

Well Worth a Shindy: the Architectural and Philosophical History of the Old Well at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Sarah Madry

Well Worth a Shindy tells the story of the Old Well, beloved symbol of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the United States' first public university. The Old Well is a Greco-Roman garden temple built in 1897 over an old water well on the campus. The facts concerning the Old Well's beginnings serve to introduce an historical study of the round temple from Mycenaean tholos tombs and treasuries to eighteenth-century English garden follies. The reasons that the Old Well was built, according to its commissioner, Edwin Alderman, the sixth president of the University of North Carolina, are repetitious of those that directed such as Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to build round temples to be symbols of their territorial and dynastic desires. The mythological, philosophical, and artistic conventions that Alderman and the designer of the Old Well, Eugene Lewis Harris, used to construct the temple were not new but were ancient guides filtered through Medieval and Renaissance prisms. A catalog of over 100 round structures in 14 countries is provided.