Talk:Sather Tower

"References"

I'm going to put in a few references to online sources now, and add more references from a few history books I have soon Thepharmakon (talk) 20:49, 24 October 2011 (UTC) 10/24/11

"The Campanile"?

• When did it stop being called just "The Campanile"? -- Zoe
  • It didn't--``The Campanile" is just a colloquial name for what is formally known as Sather Tower. We still call it the Campanile on campus. Itsthomson 11:25, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Need it be compared to Hoover Tower?

I have removed the clause "...which makes it 22 feet (7 m) taller than rival Stanford's Hoover Tower." because it seems (even to this Cal alumnus) out of place in an encyclopedia. Petershank 23:24, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

"it marks a secondary axis in his original Beaux-Arts campus plan"

A bit esoteric perhaps? Anybody care to decipher this? 76.166.245.241 (talk) 14:59, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

"Most Recognizable Symbol"

Can it really be considered as Berkeley's most recognizable symbol? Justicestudent9 (talk) 07:01, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Search Google images for Berkeley and see. EEng 17:18, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to merge 49ersBelongInSanFrancisco (talk) 06:19, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

---

I propose that Berkeley Carillon be merged into Sather Tower. I think these articles are about the same tower, the source containing facts the target doesn't, but lacking inline citations. TheGGoose (talk) 16:43, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

• Given the close connection of the subjects and the relatively small amount of material on the carillon, an integrated presentation makes sense. EEng 18:33, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

• I'll do it, thanks. 49ersBelongInSanFrancisco (talk) 06:17, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Changing Places

Hi EEng. I'm not sure that I understand your rationale for this revert of my addition to the article. The University of Concepción claim needs a source and the material about Changing Places is sourced. Cordless Larry (talk) 18:36, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

As there's been no response to this, I plan to restore the {{citation needed}} tag and the sourced material about Changing Places shortly. Cordless Larry (talk) 15:32, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Traveling, be patient. EEng 19:00, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

OK - happy to wait now that I know I have your attention, EEng. Thanks. Cordless Larry (talk) 19:05, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. We're talking about this:

David Lodge's novel Changing Places tells the story of exchange of professors between the universities of Rummidge and Euphoric State, Plotinus (thinly disguised fictional versions of the University of Birmingham and UC Berkeley), which in the book both have replicas of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on campus.

But look what this really is. A novel takes place in fictional University A and University B. A commentary says (and I believe it) that these are disguised versions of Berkeley and Birmingham. In the novel, A and B both have towers that look like the Tower of Pisa. The real Berkeley and Birmingham both have towers, but they certainly have nothing to do with the Tower of Pisa and don't even particularly look like each other (see Joseph_Chamberlain_Memorial_Clock_Tower). So really, all we have is that Sather Tower is a tower at Berkeley, and there's a book about a fictional university that's a disguised Berkeley that has a quite different tower. What in the world does this tell the reader about Sather Tower? EEng 02:09, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

The point isn't that the two towers look like each other, but that the Sather Tower and Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower inspired Lodge's choice to model his fictional universities on Berkeley and Birmingham.

You haven't addressed my point about your removal of the citation needed tag from the sentence "A tower based on the Berkeley Campanile is located at the University of Concepción, Chile". Can I presume that this was a mistake? Cordless Larry (talk) 06:37, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

• On Concepción, I thought I'd removed that a few days ago -- stupid iPhone -- but anyway I've done it now. See my edit summary.
• On Changing Places, what you're saying just isn't true. See p.76 of Showalter: the author's fictional locales resemble Berkeley and Birmingham because (drumroll) he had been on faculty at Birmingham when he took a year's leave to teach at Berkeley. Nothing to do with the towers. That in the novel he goes out of his way to inject two Towers of Pisa make the actual towers even more irrelevant. You might as well say, "In the novel he said there was a big plaza at both universities. Well, Birmingham has Chancellor's Court, and Berkeley has Sproul Plaza, so I guess they inspired that aspect of the novel too." Yeah, except most big schools have some big open area, just as many (if not most) have towers of some kind. It's just too tenuous.

My personal rule for popcult inclusion is that it's not enough that a work somehow refer to or incorporate the subject: the work should have played a role in shaping popular perception of the subject (e.g. books and plays about lobotomy had a dramatic effect on public attitudes toward it) or played a role the history of the subject itself (e.g. a novel about a murder case leads to reopening the investigation). This is nothing like this, and I don't see how it adds to the reader's understanding of Sather Tower. EEng 18:24, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, EEng, I put off replying to think about this some more, and then it slipped my mind. I agree that Lodge selected Berkeley and Birmingham because of where he was working/visiting rather than the presence of the towers, but I don't think the comparison with the big plazas is quite right. The towers are key features of the novel - almost characters in themselves - so I think that the role of the actual Berkeley and Birmingham towers in inspiring the book is much stronger than you give credit for. Whether they have shaped popular perception of the subject, I don't know, but Changing Places is the archetypal campus novel and I think it would be a shame not to note Berkeley and Birmingham's portrayal in it. Perhaps the place to do that in the universities' main articles rather than here? Cordless Larry (talk) 06:50, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I happen to be visiting Berkeley even now and was admiring Sather Tower today. It somehow does its job so well and yet with such ease. I'll be busy a few days. The didn't realiz the centrality of the towers to the novel. So let me have a while to think about it. EEng 07:04, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

References

Clock info

I added some info on the clock and its bell (the William Ashburner Memorial clock). I note the source I used states 1899 for when it was installed in Bacon but other places state 1890 or 1889. It seems to have been made by the Seth Thomas Clock Company. William Ashburner was regent from 1880-1887 when he died (he was also a founding trustee of Stanford and a mining engineer). Flickr has a photo of a notice which if someone can confirm its existence at the tower we could use as a reference https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/6829667882 --Erp (talk) 02:39, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

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