History & Culture · Capital Region
The Nott Memorial Makes Union College's Campus Instantly Legible
Union College's Nott Memorial gives Schenectady a campus landmark whose shape makes the college hard to mistake for anywhere else.
Published June 24, 2026 · Last verified June 24, 2026
The Nott Memorial is a compact way to understand Union College’s presence in Schenectady.
Union includes the building on its walking tour, and its round shape gives the campus an anchor people remember.
That shape matters in a city with several strong identities. Schenectady has downtown blocks, neighborhood streets, old industrial memory, and a college landscape tucked into the same local pattern. The Nott makes the campus easier to place inside that mix.
You do not need a deep architecture lesson to understand it. A round building in the middle of a campus is easy to remember. Once you know the Nott, Union is harder to lose on the Schenectady map.
The building also gives a visitor a simple walking-tour rhythm. Find the Nott, and the rest of the campus begins to arrange itself around that remembered shape.
That is the reader-friendly part of the landmark. It turns a college visit, a walk near campus, or an early look at Schenectady into something more legible: city here, campus here, and the Nott sitting like a pin in the map.