The sixteen-sided Nott Memorial, one of America's most dramatic Victorian buildings, is the centerpiece of the Union College Campus.

The Nott Memorial is a stone cylinder eighty-nine feet in diameter, supporting a cast iron and steel hip roof and capped with a ribbed dome. The exterior wall combines dark Schenectady bluestone with lighter Ohio sandstone. Columns of red and gray Aberdeen granite stand before the mullions of windows on the main floor.

The dome and hip roof are covered in three colors of Vermont slate. Decorating each of the sixteen sections of the dome are a small and large six-pointed star or 'hexalpha,' as they are named by the architect. Girding the lower portion of the dome is a band of red slates bearing a modified inscription from the Talmud. In its simplest translation, the phrase on the Nott says, 'the day is short, the work is great, the reward is much, the Master is urgent.'

The dome is sprinkled with 709 small colored glass windows, or illuminators, each about the size of a silver dollar and inscribed with a five-pointed star or 'pentalpha.' The illuminators are arranged in a complex pattern that unites the interior and exterior dome decoration and includes the entire Newtonian spectrum of colors.

The interior framework of the building is a cast iron and steel skeleton. The central space rises 102 feet to the apex of the dome. The encaustic tile pavement, imported from England, creates a spectacular effect combining lush floral patterns and geometric designs.