Posts tagged ‘Nittany Lion Shrine’
The Lion Shrine in Snow
The Lion Shrine is one of the most photographed icons—maybe the most photographed icon—on campus, so it’s rare to see a shot of it that you don’t feel like you’ve seen a hundred times before.
But Andy Colwell got a terrific shot last evening in the snow. He shot about a 1/2-second exposure with a tripod. You can click on the image above if you want to see it a little bigger.
Look for a photo essay of some of Andy’s great work in a future issue (most likely the May-June issue) of The Penn Stater.
Tina Hay, editor
The Best of The Penn Stater Blog, 2010
As we wrapped up 2010 and kicked off 2011, we at the Penn Stater blog took a look back at the most popular posts from our second official year in the blogosphere. Check out the five posts that earned the most hits in 2010 and got you, our readers, talking:
1. “A Snowy Penn State Wedding”
On New Year’s Eve 2009, when Tina Hay stumbled across a frigid pre-wedding photo shoot starring bride Kaitlin Infield ’07 and groom Nicholas Bevins ’07 at the Nittany Lion Shrine, the result was one hot blog post—the most popular of 2010, to be exact. Not only were readers impressed by the newlyweds’ PSU dedication, but some even credited the wedding party’s cheers for securing Penn State the Capital One Bowl win vs. the LSU Tigers the next day.
2. “How DO They Get Those Pants So Clean?”
You ever wonder how PSU’s football players keep their uniforms—especially those pristinely white pants—so, well, white? Thanks to senior editor Ryan Jones’ February blog post, thousands of you now know the answer. In a video featuring Kirk Diehl ’96, ’05, the Nittany Lions’ facilities coordinator, we learned that (more…)
A Tough Choice: Voting for the Senior Class Gift
The Allen Street Gates, when Allen Street continued through campus.
The Senior Class Gift has been a Penn State tradition since the Class of ’61—that’s 1861! — donated a portrait of Evan Pugh to hang in Old Main. Among the more notable gifts through the decades: the Allen Street Gates (thank you, Class of 1916), the Celebration Garden at Rec Hall (great call, Class of 2007), and the gift that’s impossible to top, the Nittany Lion Shrine (bravo, Class of 1940).
Voting is under way now for the Class of 2010 gift. Seniors can vote online or in the HUB-Robeson Center for one of three options, detailed on the blog PSUseniors.com. The choices:
1. A public sculpture and endowed scholarship. The staff at the Palmer Museum of Art has installed the sculpture, by Harry Gordon, between Armsby and North Freer so voters (and the rest of us) can check it out.
2. A maintenance endowment for the HUB Aquarium (which was a gift of the Class of 1999).
3. A marsh meadow boardwalk and overlook for the Arboretum at Penn State.
It’s been a big month for class gifts. Just two weeks ago, the Old Main Bell was removed from its perch, thanks to the Class of 2009. It will be restored and displayed a ground level, enabling all of us to enjoy it.
The Class of 2010 winner will be announced next week, so stay tuned.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Nittany Lion Shrine: Ready for Its Closeup
Like a lot of Penn Staters, I’ve got a bit of an attachment to the Nittany Lion Shrine. What can I say? My wedding photos were taken there.
So of course I made it a point to stop by this week as the shrine underwent digital 3D scanning, which will enable it to be rebuilt or repaired in the event of severe damage.
It turns out that the guys doing the scan, Greg Robinson and Kyle Herr of Survice Metrology, were just as excited. “We don’t usually get to be outside like this,” Robinson said. It turns out that while the stuff on Survice’s website highlights the really cool stuff, such as scanning a priceless Sphinx at the Metropolitan Museum of Art so that it’s preserved for posterity, a lot of the job is pretty routine. Satellite dishes. Hydroelectric plants.
And they weren’t inflexible on the “off-limits” thing, either. When a group that had come all the way from Atlanta appeared, they moved the equipment out of the way so the travelers could get the photo they came for.
The process itself, honestly, wasn’t all that compelling to watch. Robinson and Herr marked the statue with some reference points that looked as if they were pounded into the limestone, but turned out to be simply attached with blue painters’ tape. That’s a trick they picked up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“They tested the tape, and they let us use it on the 4,500-year old Sphinx,” Robinson said, smiling. “So if it’s safe for that, it’s safe for this Nittany Lion.”
They had brought an automatic scanner, but that wasn’t working. So Herr (right) worked over the statue by hand, and as he did so, you could watch the Nittany Lion appear on a computer monitor. Late Tuesday afternoon, only the paws were visible. (You can see for yourself in the photo below. All of these shots, by the way, were taken by our editor, Tina Hay ’83.) By Wednesday morning, however, it was possible to see almost the whole lion, minus a few holes.
Later Wednesday, to supplement the scanning, the guys bathed the shrine in white light, which gives them additional data for the scan. You can get a sense of what that looks like with Tina’s picture above, which shows the stripes.
It’s nice to know that in case of emergency, the Nittany Lion Shrine could be rebuilt. But there are other long-term plans, too–including possibly animating the shrine and making it move. WPSU producer Kristian Berg, who was onsite with a camera crew, is hoping to find a way to make that happen.
I’m rooting for that, too.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Nittany Lion Shrine ‘Closing’ for Two Days
If you need to get a photo of yourself or your loved ones at the Nittany Lion Shrine, better get it done before next Tuesday, Sept. 22. Access to the shrine will be closed—or, as Penn State Live puts it, the shrine will “be unable to receive guests” for two days as it is digitally scanned.
The scan will result in a digital replica of the lion, and if it’s ever damaged, it can be rebuilt. The current plan in case of damage is to use a mold that was created in 1995 (when the shrine was closed for six weeks), but cracks and time have limited that mold’s usefulness. This scan should be useful for decades.
The process is the same one that’s been used on famous landmarks such as the Sphinx and Michelangelo’s David. So the Nittany Lion Shrine is going to be among some pretty elite company!
Penn State says the work should be done by Thursday, when football fans begin coming to campus. We’ll be at the shrine to monitor progress next week, and you can look for updates on the blog and in the November/December issue of The Penn Stater.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
The Lehigh Valley Lion is Home
Nichola Gutgold ’99g, a faculty member at Penn State Lehigh Valley, sent along these photos from the moving of their lion shrine this morning. The whole Lehigh Valley campus is moving from Fogelsville to the town of Center Valley, and that meant moving the two-ton shrine and its six-ton base.
Here’s a shot of the shrine being hoisted up onto a truck for the 16-mile drive:
Here’s the crowd waiting for it in the rain at the new Center Valley location:
And here’s the Nittany Lion mascot, who drove the truck, posing with the newly relocated shrine.
The shrine is a replica of the University Park lion shrine sculpted by Heinz Warneke.
Tina Hay, editor
Moving Day for the Lehigh Valley Lion
In just a few minutes (as I type this), the eight-ton replica of the Nittany Lion shrine that has stood guard at Penn State’s Lehigh Valley campus since 2001 will be on the move. Coinciding with the campus’s move to Center Valley, the shrine will be trucked 16 miles this morning from Fogelsville to its new home. Dan Puchyr ’70a Eng, a Lehigh Valley alum and president of Bracy Contracting, donated the equipment and labor for the trip.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
A Pleasant Surprise at the National Cathedral
The south portal of the National Cathedral, which turns out to have a Penn State connection. Click to enlarge.
It’s tough to get away from Penn State, I’ve found.
I drove down to Washington, D.C., yesterday for a magazine-publishing conference. The conference activities didn’t start until last evening, but I decided to go down early and do a little sightseeing before the conference.
My first stop was the National Cathedral, where my picture-taking of the stained glass inside was interrupted because a church service was about to start. So I went outside to get some exterior shots, and found myself at the south portal, which is what you see in the first photo, above.
Do you notice how, between the two doors, there’s a long slender sculpture? (If you click on the photo, you’ll get a bigger version where you can see it much more easily.) In architecture, a sculpture in that location is called a trumeau—a fact I learned from reading the cathedral’s Web site before the trip.
I got in a little closer to take some shots of that sculpture, among others. And then I saw something familiar. Check out the signature that I stumbled onto at the base of the trumeau.
It turns out that Heinz Warneke, sculptor of the Nittany Lion Shrine, did a little work for the National Cathedral as well.
Here’s a detail from the top of Warneke’s trumeau:
And here’s another detail from the same trumeau:
That discovery was fun enough, but then later, after I got to the hotel, turned on my laptop, and started poking around on the Web, I discovered that Warneke did more than just this trumeau. He also designed the entire scene above the two doors. In architectural terms, it’s called the tympanum, and this particular tympanum is titled Last Supper & Road to Emmaus.
Heinz Warneke's "Last Supper & Road to Emmaus."
So I looked through my photos to see if I had a shot of that, and it turns out I do—it’s the photo at right.
You can see a dozen more photos (not mine) of Warneke’s work on the south portal here.
From looking around on the Web, I learned that Warneke was born in Germany in 1895. He sculpted the Lion shrine for Penn State in 1942, of course, and did his work for the National Cathedral about 20 years after that—in the late 1950s/early 1960s. He died in 1983.
The sculpture "Prodigal Son" in the garden on the cathedral grounds.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Something else I photographed while waiting for the service inside to finish was the Bishop’s Garden on the cathedral grounds. I noticed a sculpture there, called Prodigal Son, but the light wasn’t quite right, so I didn’t take a close-up of it. I just got this one so-so shot you see here, a photo of the garden with Prodigal Son in the background.
You probably know where this is headed. Yup, when I was looking around on the Web later, I discovered that the sculptor who did Prodigal Son was none other than our man Warneke.
Tina Hay, editor
Virtual Nittany Lion
Enough Penn Staters apparently hang out at Second Life that Penn State commissioned an on-line sculptor to design this virtual Nittany Lion Shrine. Looks to me that it’s a little more buffed than its physical on-campus counterpart.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
You’re Moving Where?
The dispatcher at the moving company took my name, address, date of move and the number of rooms in my apartment. Then she asked, “And where are you moving to?”
“State College, Pennsylvania,” I said.
Long pause. Very long pause.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
I laughed. I’m sure she thought I was a little crazy. I was calling from Miami, where it was about 75 degrees and sunny, and I was looking at the beach from the window of my home office. The temperature in snow-covered Pennsylvania was in the teens.
But none of that matters to me. I’m going home.
And Penn State is home. I wasn’t born there, but I definitely grew up there.
As a Penn State student, I made lifetime friends and connected with the professors and mentors who launched me into a fulfilling career in journalism. Later, as a professional living in State College, covering the university and its sports teams for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I met my husband, also a Penn State grad. Our wedding photos were taken at the Nittany Lion Shrine.
I love the energy of a university and its community, and I can’t wait to get there and become part of that again.
Even if it means digging out my socks, sweaters and boots.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
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