Yerkes Observatory

While on Fall break, my boyfriend and I took a day trip to Williams Bay, 10 miles from Lake Geneva. We set out to visit Yerkes Observatory, which once housed the world’s largest refracting telescope. The telescope is still there, however, other larger refracting telescopes now exist.

As we pulled up the observatory, I was in awe. The building is astonishing and is engraved and sculpted with incredible detail in the style of terracotta design. The pictures sculpted into the architecture had stories within them. Pictures of moons, fish, people, and a variety of different

animals, took up the majority of the ornamentation. There is a figure

carved into many of the columns supporting the front entrance that appears to be William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago. At one time, there was a hornet perched on the nose of the figure stinging it and making it swell. A theory is that George Ellery Hale considered the swollen nose to “gross” and around 1900, requested that the hornets be removed. The architect, Henry Ives Cobb, let his imagination run wild while designing the building. However, his last wishes before his death were to have the plans burned.

When we walked inside, I was by no means disappointed by what I saw. The ornamentation on the inside foyer was just as magnificent as the outside. Since an observatory was a place for learning and discovery, owls perched all around the border of the room to symbolize wisdom.

The building was proposed by astronomer George Ellery Hale and financed by Charles Tyson Yerkes. The observatory was established in 1897. The grounds were designed by John Olmsted, brother of Frederick Law Olmsted. The building and telescope is property of the University of Chicago and only used for educational purposes. In 2005, the university

announced that it had plans to sell the property and there were plans to put a resort on the 77-acre lot along with an array of luxury homes. But in 2007, the university suspended the plans. The observatory stands as a symbol of a combination of technology and architectural advances in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

A couple things I found interesting while on our tour was that the electronics system used in the dome housing the telescope is the original. I also learned that Albert Einstein studied at Yerkes.

I recommend to everyone to visit Yerke’s Observatory. The tour is free but donations are encouraged.