Since 1924, Jesuits and their lay counterparts have been measuring earthquakes in this one-story Gothic structure, which currently stands next to Edwards Parade on the Rose Hill campus. Its equipment detects temblors around the world, including the 4.8 magnitude earthquake that rattled the area in April.

The observatory, which consists of an unassuming above-ground structure and a concrete vault 28 feet underground where the seismic instruments reside, is easy to miss. But it has played an important role in the advancement of seismology and physics over the years.

Stephen Holler, Ph.D., chair of Fordham’s physics department, who maintains the station, said it’s important to “keep an eye” on the planet and its rumblings.

“We’re always learning things about the Earth, and especially in the kind of high-density area that we’re in, it’s useful to monitor for earthquakes [and other tremors],” he said. “Maybe, in the event that something is happening or changing, we can potentially prepare for it.”

In the years that it has been operational, the station has recorded many earthquakes, including an 8.6 magnitude quake that struck Alaska in 1946 and a 7.7 magnitude quake that struck Taiwan in 1999. Holler is often called on by the media to discuss earthquakes when they strike the area.

Digging Deep

Fordham first got involved in seismology in 1910—along with nine other Jesuit colleges—through the Seismological Society of America, which had a Jesuit priest as one of its founding members. That year, a seismograph was installed in the basement of Cunniffe Hall. In 1920, Joseph J. Lynch, S.J., a physics instructor, took over the station. 

At the time, seismographs worked by utilizing a suspended mass—such as a weight—that remained relatively stationary, while the base of the instrument, which was fixed to the ground, moved during an earthquake. A recording of the relative motion between the mass and the base was recorded, providing a measurement of the ground shaking.

But the instruments worked best when isolated and in close contact with the bedrock. So in 1922, the University used stone acquired from a recent subway excavation to construct a building with underground space where they could operate with minimal disruption. It was originally built in the spot where Faber Hall now stands.

A Plaque From the Pope

Funding for the construction was provided by William Spain, whose son William, a physics student at Fordham, died that year. It was formally blessed by Bishop John Collins, S.J., Fordham’s 13th president, in a ceremony on Oct. 24, 1924. To honor the occasion, Pope Pius XI sent a bronze plaque with an image of St. Emidio, the divine protector against earthquakes, that is still embedded in the building’s exterior door.

In Pop Culture

Almost immediately after it opened, it became an object of fascination. A working model of the station was displayed at the 1939/1940 World’s Fair in Flushing, Queens, and Fordham displayed an operational seismograph at the 1964/1965 World’s Fair as well. 

Father Lynch was routinely one of the first to report major seismic events around the world to media outlets. In April 1946, Life Magazine stated that the “Jesuit seismologist is America’s best-known interpreter of things that shake the earth, including milk trains, quakes, seismic waves.” 

The station even became a part of pop culture. In a 1974 episode of the television show M*A*S*H. (starring Alan Alda, FCRH ’56), Colonel Henry Blake joked that he snores so loudly that he “even got a fan letter once from the seismograph people at Fordham.”

A Revival

In 1970, Father Lynch published a reflection titled Watching Our Trembling Earth for 50 Years (Fordham University Press), which recounted the ways he and fellow Jesuits worked together to perfect the science of seismology. Among other anecdotes, he noted how one night in 1929, in the course of calibrating the station’s clock with one at the Naval Observatory in Arlington, Virginia, he stumbled on bootleggers who were bottling whiskey on campus. 

For several years after Father Lynch’s death in 1987, the station was either dormant or tended to by students who pursued seismology as a hobby. 

In 1996, physics professor Ben Crooker took over supervision of the student club that had been using the equipment. By then, the field had changed a lot with the advent of the internet and increased computer power. 

In 2001, thanks to a donation from an unidentified alumnus, Fordham was able to purchase a Guralp DM24 CMG3T machine, which combines the functions of a seismometer and digitizer. The University officially rejoined the international seismology community.

The Station Today

Today, measuring an earthquake now is akin to conducting a CT scan on the planet, with multiple stations—including Fordham’s—reporting observations from around the country to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) data repository in Boulder, Colorado. 

“Fordham’s station is like one cell in a giant camera,” Crooker told Fordham News in 2007, “used to build a seismic map of the Earth.”

The Guralp, which looks like a coffee can with wires poking out of it, sits on a concrete pedestal beneath a plexiglass box and a blanket, which keeps it dust free and at a constant temperature. The data it collects is sent to a computer in Freeman Hall, which then relays it to USGS.

The rest of the vault is occupied by dormant equipment once used by Lynch and his successors. Every year on the day before commencement, Holler opens up the station to graduating physics students who marvel at the antiquated instruments. 

“They’re kind of museum pieces, but they’re fantastic for quizzing the students on their physics fundamentals,” he said.

A quick glimpse at a readout from the station’s instruments reveals a large spike around 10:23 a.m., followed by smaller spikes until 11 a.m., said Stephen Holler, Ph.D., an associate professor of physics at Fordham, who heads the station, located next to Freeman hall on the Rose Hill campus.

“But overall, this earthquake was a very short and very quick event compared to some of the others that we’ve seen where it seems like it kind of rings for a long time,” said Holler.

He said that although the quake, which struck in Lebanon, New Jersey, rattled residents from Philadelphia to Boston, it was not nearly as bad as other recent quakes.

“The 7.8 magnitude quake in Taiwan—that was 1,000 times more powerful than what we just felt, for perspective. They can get truly scary,” said Holler, whose expert commentary was featured by several media outlets throughout the day. But in the New York region, today’s quake was the largest felt since 2011.

As for aftershocks, Holler said residents need not be worried.

“There may be some aftershocks, which will be the ground resettling down after it slipped, but I don’t expect them to be any larger than what we just experienced,” he said.

The Fordham seismic station, which is operated by the Department of Physics, has been recording earthquakes around the world from the same small building on the Rose Hill campus since 1931. One of the few seismic stations in New York state, it now operates with digital technology.

It’s part of a vast network of monitoring stations that work together to determine data such as the strength and length of the quake, as well as the depth of it. Holler said it’s comparable to the way law enforcement uses data from multiple cell phone towers to pinpoint the location of a single cell phone.

The station has a state-of-the-art broadband seismometer and also houses a strong motion detector under a United States Geological Survey (USGS) program to assess earthquake risk remediation in large metropolitan centers. Data from the station is streamed to the USGS data repository in Boulder, Colorado.

The science of earthquakes has been studied at Fordham since 1910, when the first monitoring facility was constructed in the basement of Cunniffe House.

Rumblings from the offices of the University president apparently disturbed the sensitive instruments, so in 1923, the University constructed a new seismic observatory donated by William Spain and dedicated to the memory of his son William. It was moved several times before finding a permanent home next to Freeman Hall, where the physics department is located.

“It saturated the detector,” said Holler.

With more than a century of use behind it, the station is still one of the few in New York state, and now operates with digital technology. There are two instruments, one of which is less sensitive so that it could survive should a large earthquake hit New York. The guts of the instruments are still fundamentally the same as a century ago—concrete masses attached to springs at bedrock with motion generating an electric current that measures north/south, east/west, and vertical movements. Each movement is reflected via different colors on the seismograph chart.

“Normally you don’t see much on the strong motion instrument, but the Mexico earthquake was very strong and relatively near so we got a good signal, even on the less sensitive instrument,” said Crooker.

Holler said the Mexican tremors reached Rose Hill within minutes and the device has picked up tremors from as far away as Sumatra. The data is share as part of the Lamont Cooperative Seismic Network and is streamed to the USGS data repository.

It turns out some people did notice. They called their local news outlets, who in turn called the News and Media Relations Bureau at Fordham. They were all looking for Benjamin C. Crooker, Ph.D., associate professor of physics and director of the Fordham University Seismic Station.

We couldn’t reach Crooker that day, but happily for the readers of Science Friday, he did give a great interview to The Observer, the Lincoln Center student newspaper, in February: “Fordham Monitors World’s Seismic Activity.”

What about New York? Can a big one happen here? The odds are against it. The biggest quake in recent years here was in 2002, when a magnitude two earthquake hit New York City. It was caused by an “ancient” (meaning relatively inactive) fault, Cameron’s Fault, which runs through 125th street, said Crooker.

Inside Fordham also wrote about the Seismic Station a couple of years ago: “New York’s Shaky Legacy Traced to Rose Hill Underground.”

Fordham is one of a handful of broadband seismographic stations in the New York-New Jersey region that feeds its data to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, which in turn compiles and sends all the regional data to Boulder. The Guralp DM24 CMG3T machine, which combines the functions of a seismometer and digitizer, helps researchers make, effectively, a “CAT scan of the Earth,” according to Crooker. “Fordham’s station is like one cell in a giant camera,” he said, “used to build a seismic map of the earth.”

Just in case you’re wondering, the earth did not move for the News and Media Relations staff on Wednesday.