Buhl Building Relief Sculptures by Sidney Waugh

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The Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular Science opened in this building in 1939.  It was a big deal.  This was only the 5th planetarium to open in the country and the first one to install a state of the art, professional quality telescope for other than professionals use.  One of the first science museums (as opposed to the museums of natural history), this facility was built for everyone.  On the outside of the limestone structure,  Sidney Waugh created 6 relief sculptures.

Day: On the east side of the building, above a door is a small relief of a woman holding a bird.  The bird was considered a symbol of dawn.

Night: The same size as day, this image of a sleeping woman is almost hidden these days.  Because of the expansion of the Children's Museum, you need to walk all the way around to the back past the walkway to the main entrance to find it.

 The Heavens: This relief includes images portraying the sun, wind, rain and lightening.

The Earth: The plants here represent the carboniferous age plants which created the area's coal deposits.  The hammer is specifically a geologist's hammer.

There are two bronze relief images with gold leaf located over what used to be the main doors to the Buhl Planetarium.  They were meant to compare two eras of science and show tools of the trade then and now.

Primitive Science: This is represented by a Native American from the Mingo Tribe.  He is depicted with fire for smoke signals to show long distance communications; snowshoes (which were specific to North America), medicinal plants, bow and arrow, and a tree to represent the primeval forest.

 Modern Science: This relief shows what were modern tools at the time: a cathode-ray tube, microscope (for biology), globe (for geography), and laboratory beakers (for chemistry).

Mr Waugh may be best known for his work as chief designer for Steuben Glass for three decades, but the MIT graduate also did impressive public sculptures in several major cities.