Revered for its striking Gothic architecture, the Michigan Law Quad is a coveted spot for picnics, graduation photos, and LinkedIn banners alike. Its architects, the New York City firm York and Sawyer, drew inspiration from the historic buildings of Oxford and Cambridge universities.
In a letter dated May 12, 1930—an original copy of which the Observer reviewed at the Bentley Historical Library—Philip Sawyer posed a question to William W. Cook, the wealthy alumnus who funded the project:
“I would like to ask whether it is agreeable to you to have us use in the lower windows [of the Legal Research Library], which are most conspicuous, the coats of arms of the American colleges and in the upper windows, which are furthest removed from the eye, the insignia of the English colleges at Cambridge and Oxford.”
Cook approved Sawyer’s proposal, and thus in the windows of the Reading Room (as the Legal Research Library has come to be better known) can be found the shields of Oxford and Cambridge—the oldest universities in the English-speaking world. But they’re not quite as old as the shields suggest. The earliest evidence of teaching at Oxford dates to 1096 and at Cambridge to 1209—much later than 896 and 915, the founding dates etched beneath the pair’s respective shields in the glass.
Heinigke and Smith, the stained-glass makers commissioned to design the windows, contacted academic institutions requesting copies of their seals. In correspondence reproduced in an article published in the Michigan Alumnus in 1931, Otto W. Heinigke informed Sawyer of the high response rate:
“Almost without exception the American colleges responded with pasters or impressions of their seals together with scraps of ribbon to demonstrate the accurate colors of their war paint. Almost as generally, European institutions sent either accurately colored prints or hand colored drawings of their arms.”
It is unclear whether Oxford and Cambridge were among the respondents. But if they were, it raises the question: why send inaccurate material? The answer likely has something to do with historical debates between the two ancient universities in which both laid claim to “older sibling” status. Such claims—one of which was that Cambridge was established by King Edward the Elder in AD 915—apparently still had some currency at the time of the Law Quad’s construction.
There is another stained glass window with an error as the biblical reference doesn’t match the Picture, and so I think whoever designed these wasn’t too careful as Matthew 5:21 is murder but the picture infers perhaps infidelity so maybe it’s actually Matthew 5:27 instead, but then infidelity isn’t agains the law, so it is very confusing. I wonder if the designed of these windows was more interested in the stained glass than the actual accuracy of the content?