Caterer Crafts Old Main as Gingerbread House

12/05/2017 

When Adam Harvey thinks of the holidays, he thinks of gingerbread houses.

“I have always enjoyed gingerbread houses and thought all the buildings on campus were beautiful,” said Harvey, who is the Auxiliary Service Corporation (ASC) assistant manager of food production.

“I thought Old Main was so grand and I could see it as a gingerbread house. It is a nice recognizable building on campus.”

That’s why Harvey, who studied at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and has worked for ASC for six years, recently crafted a gingerbread house modeled after the iconic SUNY Cortland edifice.

Harvey was assisted by Tana Armitstead, ASC cook assistant at Neubig Dining Hall.

In addition to gingerbread, the house sports a type of icing named “royal icing” with windows made of poured sugar. On the inside, the 3-foot wide by 5-foot long replica building designed to scale is lined with holiday lights to capture viewers’ attention.

This project seemed time consuming before starting the building process. But Darrell Thomas, ASC catering manager, helped Harvey and Armitstead save a lot of time by directing them to obtain the actual blueprints from Old Main to help in the scaling process.

Harvey and Armitstead then worked roughly 40 hours in building and perfecting the house.

“Students have been taking pictures of it and are excited about the house,” said Armitstead.

The gingerbread house will be on display at different locations around campus until the end of January. Currently it is displayed in the third floor lobby of Corey Union across from the catering office.

Pictures and video of the gingerbread house construction are posted online.

Prepared by Communications Office writing intern Navita Ramprasad