Is the statue outside near Bapst that of St. Mary? What is the story behind it? It’s beautiful!

I’m having my assistants research this question. In the meantime, can you offer some clarification: Do you mean the statue along the driveway to the South of Bapst, or the one in the niche on the north side of the building (facing Comm Ave.)?

Update 6/6/19: If you mean the one along the driveway, yes, that’s St. Mary. The significant iconographic detail is her foot on a snake (bit.ly/mary-snake). A shrine in that location seems to have been planned by Senior Sodality in 1948; the earliest existing photo that could be found is in the 1951 Sub Turri (bit.ly/bc-sub-turri-1951), but that seems to be a different statue. It is unclear when that one was replaced with the current one, which does not have a plaque.

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.