May 2, 1997: Volume 40, Number 3

Watson Fellow 'Risks Blasphemy' to Compare Churches And Train Stations

Zane Riester '97 will use a Watson Fellowship to study architectural similarities between Renaissance churches and Beaux-Arts train stations in Italy, France and the U.K. His proposal is described here. Riester and Jessica Bernstein, whose Watson was profiled in the last issue, bring to 42 the number of Union students who have become Watson Fellows since the program began in 1969.

No one would describe a wait in Penn Station as inspiring. Except maybe Zane Riester.

While waiting for his train back to Union at the end of winter break during his sophomore year, Riester saw on the wall of Penn Station a photo of what he thought was St. Peter's Church in Rome, a grand and beautiful example of Renaissance church architecture he had just studied in "Introduction to Architecture."

Then he read the caption: "Pennsylvania Station, 1906."

"It was the first time I realized that the original Penn Station had been destroyed," the senior recalls. "I couldn't believe what I saw – it was as if they were taunting me with pictures of this grand original structure in such a dismal, atrophied place."

That moment and subsequent "rediscoveries" of Grand Central Station stirred in Riester a fascination with the architectural similarities between Renaissance churches and turn-of-the-century train stations.

So began an obsession that recently earned the New York City native an $18,000 Watson Fellowship to carry on his investigation next year at churches and train stations in Italy, France and the United Kingdom.

"These buildings share so much in common in terms of an architectural vocabulary — columns, symmetry, temple fronts, a grand hall — and the emotional response they invoke in the viewer," says Riester, a political science major and history minor. "They are awesome, amazing and humbling.

"While it risks blasphemy to compare a train to the grand significance of God, churches and stations are in their respective ways visions of power, strength, and glory," he wrote in his proposal. "Train stations thus had to be large imposing structures much like the cathedrals and churches of Europe."

Trains stations also were symbols of a town's prosperity, a function once served by churches, he notes. Because of their central importance, stations employed the highest degree of design and adornment, just as churches had done centuries before.

Stations – like churches – also serve a role in integrating members of society. "A lot of different people from different social classes come to a church for different reasons. It's the same for the stations. The poor will go to the steps of a church just as they go to the steps of a train station."

And stations, like churches centuries before, reflected the spirit of society. "In the previous generation, there was a sense of romance with travel, which was something new. The trains were the first to play a role in connecting everything. It was more than just a railroad. It was about the development of society."

Riester says his analysis will use black and white photography, interviews and archival research. He plans to spend about four months each in Italy, France and England. He hopes to share his discoveries through a Web site, and possibly a CD ROM. "Nothing could be more fitting for a study of the technological progress of one age than to use the technology of my own," he says.

During his Union career Riester has been a Junior Achievement volunteer, brotherhood director of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, treasurer and founding member of the Union College film club, and participant in the Steinmetz Symposium. He has served internships with the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York and with Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli. He also has traveled in Africa, India and Europe.

After his Watson, Riester says, he would like to go to architecture school.

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