Notre Dame Seishin University Notre Dame Hall Main Building

What Is the Notre Dame Seishin University Notre Dame Hall Main Building?

The Notre Dame Seishin University Notre Dame Hall Main Building is a two-storey reinforced concrete school building in Ifukucho, Kita-ku, Okayama City, built in 1929 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on July 31, 2007.

In Japanese it is ノートルダム清心女子大学ノートルダムホール本館 (Nōtoru Damu Hōru Honkan). The Notre Dame Hall Main Building occupies the south side of the campus and faces south. Its plan is a hollow square wrapped around an inner courtyard, with a building area of 3,250 square meters, and the university's main entrance opens at the southeast corner. Antonin Raymond designed it and Obayashi-gumi built it; university records date its completion, together with the East Building, to December 1929.

The university calls the Main Building its first building. More than 90 years on it still holds administrative offices, lecture rooms, some faculty offices, and the main student facilities, including the notice boards.

Why the Notre Dame Hall Main Building Was Registered

The Notre Dame Hall Main Building is entry 33-0154 in the national register, listed under the criterion that it serves as a model of architectural form. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out two things: continuous eaves that underline the horizontal, and window frames that run on from the columns in a disciplined rhythm. It calls the building a good example of early Showa modernism.

Stand back and the logic is easy to read. A thin concrete eave runs unbroken from one end of the facade to the other, and the columns and tall window frames cut across it at even intervals. The long, two-storey block never turns monotonous, yet there is no applied historical ornament at all. The concrete frame itself supplies the order, which is the core idea of the modern movement.

Professor Ueda, a scholar of architecture at the university, picked out the same unbroken eaves and vertical window frames in a 2007 article written after the registration was recommended. The university, for its part, gives the fact that the Main Building is still used much as it was built as a reason for the registration.

Highlights of the Notre Dame Hall Main Building

Original pivot windows

The windows are the 1929 originals, hung from the top and pivoting open. When a row of them is opened to the same angle, the vertical beat of the facade grows even stronger.

Round windows and sliding doors

Inside, round windows look from the classrooms onto the corridors, and each classroom is entered through a single wooden sliding door. Professor Ueda saw in these doors an echo of Japanese fusuma panels. It is a small clue to how a Czech-born architect who reached Japan by way of America folded Japanese joinery into a modernist school.

Terrazzo corridors and stairs

Corridor floors, skirting, and stairs are finished in polished artificial stone, a terrazzo-like finish, and tiles are set into the nosing of each stair tread, probably to keep feet from slipping. Students have been climbing these steps for over 90 years.

Traces of wartime black paint

During the war the Main Building was painted black so that its white walls would not guide bombers. It was repainted white afterward, but the university archives note that black paint which dripped onto the Mannari granite base at the foot of the student entrance pillars is still there. Close to asphalt in composition, it has never come off completely. Look down at the base of those pillars to find a small record of 1945.

Visiting the Notre Dame Hall Main Building

The Notre Dame Hall Main Building is a working building used for classes and administration, and the interior is not open to the public. Visits must be arranged with the university in advance and mainly cover the exterior. Photography is limited to the outside of the building; taking pictures inside or of students is not allowed, and classrooms and faculty offices are off limits.

The best view is from the southeast corner by the main entrance, where the eave lines of the south and east faces and the windows turning the corner can be taken in at once. The south facade gets sun for most of the day, and the eaves throw sharp shadows across the white wall.

To see the pivot windows, round windows, and terrazzo stairs up close, the surest route is the guided viewing the university holds. Directions and booking details are on the Notre Dame Seishin University Notre Dame Hall page.