The Cube - Give Endover a Spin

Photo: Saul Vielmetti, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

A stop on University of Michigan Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.

Meet Endover, though hardly anyone calls it that. To students it's simply the Cube: a 15-foot black steel cube balanced on one corner, so the whole thing looks ready to topple. It isn't. Its pivot is sunk into the ground, and with a firm push the roughly 2,400-pound sculpture slowly turns.

The artist, Tony Rosenthal, graduated from Michigan in 1936 and went on to a long career making large public sculpture. The Cube was installed in 1968, a gift of the Class of 1965 and the sculptor himself. It's a close cousin of Rosenthal's Alamo, the cube that has stood at Astor Place in New York since 1967. Rosenthal never meant Alamo to spin, but the public discovered it could, and he came to enjoy it.

Giving the Cube a spin on the way to class is a Michigan ritual. Put your shoulder against a corner and walk it around; it goes easier with a friend pushing too.

Getting here: Cross State Street to Regents' Plaza, just north of the Michigan Union; the black cube standing on its corner is hard to miss.

Did you know?: The Cube left Regents' Plaza from 2018 to 2019 while the Michigan Union next door was renovated, and students were glad to see it back.

Photo op: Crouch low a few steps back so the Cube looms over the people pushing it, and catch it mid-turn.

More on Wikipedia: Endover · Tony Rosenthal · Alamo

The Cube - Give Endover a Spin

Stops on this tour