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1879 – present · the image life of a gilded roof
The fame: If South Bend has one image in the world's mind, it is this one: a gold dome over a red-brick hall, a statue on top, seen across a quad or a television screen. The university's own writers say it without embarrassment — Notre Dame's magazine arm calls the Dome "arguably the world's most recognized college landmark," and its regilding coverage calls it "the iconic architecture known the world over." The claim is the university's own characterization and is printed as such; the evidence beneath it is a century and a half of reproduction — the Dome is the mark the university puts on itself, the backdrop of its broadcasts, and the silhouette by which a football audience that has never seen Indiana locates the place on a map.
The documented life of the gold: The dome that carries the fame was finished in September 1882 over the rebuilt Main Building — and finished ungilded; the first gilding came in 1886, four years after the statue went up, as the Notre Dame history in this record tells whole. The gold has been renewed on a fifteen-to-twenty-year cycle ever since. The twelfth regilding was carried out in 2023 by Conrad Schmitt Studios: scaffolding rose in May 2023, and the work put 23.75-carat gold leaf over the dome and the statue together — less than ten pounds of gold across some seven thousand square feet, the dome itself accounting for roughly six thousand five hundred. The previous regilding had been in 2005; the eighteen-year interval between them is the measure of how long a skin of gold less than ten pounds in weight carries the world's picture of this city. The statue's own dimensions the university's outlets do not state consistently — its publications have variously given 16 feet, 17 feet, 18 feet 7 inches and 19 feet for the figure of Mary — and the Notre Dame history in this record carries that question open; this section picks none of them.
Cross-reference: The building, the 1879 fire, the dome's construction and the gilding's first refusal are the Notre Dame history's (University of Notre Dame, und-fire-dome). This entry carries only the fame: the image, and the maintenance of the image.
Sources
- ND Stories, University of Notre Dame — "Golden Hour" (the "world's most recognized college landmark" characterization; the scaffolding of May 2023); "Staying Gold: Twelve Maidens, Minus One" and "As good as gold — trivia about the Dome" (the twelfth regilding in 2023 by Conrad Schmitt Studios; 23.75-carat leaf; less than ten pounds over about 7,000 square feet, the dome about 6,500; the 2005 regilding and the eighteen-year interval).
- The Notre Dame history in this record — the dome finished ungilded in September 1882, first gilding 1886; the statue's height carried as an open conflict in the university's own outlets.
- Atlas Obscura — "Golden Dome, University of Notre Dame": last regilded 2023 with 23.75-carat gold leaf.