Sound tourism is a real thing, and the Clapping Circle at Purdue University in West Lafayette is one of the hobby’s most popular Midwest stops.
Academy Park sits roughly in the middle of Purdue’s campus, just to the south of Heavilon Hall and to the northwest of the Purdue Memorial Union. Academy Park is a five-acre arboretum of carefully manicured grass, paved pathways and lots of big trees. On paper, Purdue designers wanted to pay homage to the Aristotelian intellectual ideal of the “smart stroll,” as advertised by Socrates, then Plato, and then Aristotle. Somewhere in the park there’s a philosophical musing etched into an obelisk concerning this tradition.

It’s a lovely idea, but in reality Academy Park replaced a mishmash of parking lots and narrow streets ripping through the heart of the campus in 1997. Cracked asphalt and the hot stink of car exhaust are not fodder for eager minds. Trees, benches, and gentle hillsides make up Academy Park, perfect for an outdoor classroom (Plato would approve). The half-dozen paths shooting across the park meet at a center patio, a (roughly) 50-foot circle of paving bricks commonly called the Clapping Circle.
