From Time Brown:

This was called the Redwood Telescope.  Its aim was to
measure atmospheric scintillation noise in stellar photometry, using
the multiple panes of glass as mirrors to feed light from a star to a
single 8-inch telescope.  Since each pane sees the star through a
different volume of atmosphere, the scintillation noise for the sum
should be smaller than for the same-size telescope looking directly at
the star.  The redwood part was designed and built by Lee Lacey;  as I
recall, this may have been one of the last things he did at HAO.  The
project fizzled because of lack of a working photomultiplier
photometer to put on the 8-inch.