Georgian Court University - [Part 1: Sundial and Satyrs]

We got our first real snow (other than a dusting) last night in Central New Jersey but it has been warming up, and changed over to rain, which is now turning the snow into a slushy mess. I decided to take a drive over to Georgian Court University and see what I could find to photograph this afternoon.

Here's a brief bio on Georgian Court University, as quoted from their About GCU webpage:

Founded and sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy, Georgian Court University is located in Lakewood, New Jersey. Set on magnificent 156-acre estate formerly belonging to financier George Jay Gould, the campus is conveniently situated 60 miles from New York and Philadelphia, and only 10 miles from the Jersey Shore. Bordering Lake Carasaljo, the site is a National Historic Landmark with alluring statuary, beautiful architecture and lush gardens. After a long history as a women’s college with coeducational graduate programs and undergraduate evening programs, Georgian Court became fully coeducational in 2013.

The campus appeared virtually deserted this afternoon and so I felt like I had the whole campus to myself. I could see by the lack of human footprints in the snow that very few people had been out and about. There were, however, plenty of Canada Goose, squirrel, and bird tracks in the snow.

In this first installment of this series I'd like to show you a cool sundial that I photographed. I don't know much about sundials but after some Googling, I found this link:

Sundials - World's Oldest Clocks - North American Sundial Society

which maintains a list of selected sundials of New Jersey.

Here's what they have to say about this particular sundial:

Lakewood - New Jersey - USA - Horizontal - Dial 615
A one-foot diameter bronze horizontal dial on a carved marble base depicting three satyrs holding up the dial. Sundial is original to the Gould estate, now Georgian Court University campus. The dial is supported by a carved marble sculpture depicting three satyrs.

I didn't realize that sundials are so complicated to discuss. To really understand them requires a fair bit of geometry and astronomy. Don't worry, I won't be getting into the heavy theory about sundials. But I will say that this is a horizontal sundial (i.e. like your typical garden-variety) whereby the plane that receives the shadow is aligned horizontally.

As described by Wikipedia:

A sundial is a device that tells the time of day by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word it consists of a flat plate (the dial) and a gnomon which casts a shadow onto the dial. As the sun appears to move across the sky, the shadow aligns with different hour-lines which are marked on the dial to indicate the time of day.

Confession number two, I had no idea what a satyr was. But, according to the above description by the North American Sundial Society, there are three satyrs holding up this horizontal, circular sundial.

So, again, Google to the rescue:

GREEK MYTHOLOGY
One of a class of lustful, drunken woodland gods. In Greek art they were represented as a man with a horse's ears and tail, but in Roman representations as a man with a goat's ears, tail, legs, and horns.

It turns out that studying up on satyrs will get you to some pretty dicey web sites, so be careful (NSFW)!!! And I found it a little odd that many of the statues on campus are of the upper-half-human (usually bare-chested, and well-endowed women) and lower-half-beast variety. But I guess this is due to the fact that most of these statues were inherited from the Gould estate when the Sisters of Mercy took possession of the property.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy these sundial images. The final 12 images are of the zodiac signs around the perimeter of the sundial.

I'll probably have two or three more upcoming posts on Georgian Court University, as there were a number of interesting statues, fountains, benches, etc within its small campus.

For more on sundials, see: