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Main Building (University of Texas at Austin)
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Main Building (University of Texas at Austin)
The Main Building (known colloquially as The Tower) is a structure at the center of the University of Texas at Austin campus in Downtown Austin, Texas, United States. The Main Building's 307-foot (94 m) tower has 27 floors.
The old Victorian-Gothic Main Building, designed by Frederick Ernst Ruffini and Abner Cook, served as the central point of the campus's forty-acre site, and was used for nearly all purposes beginning in 1882. However, by the 1930s, discussions arose about the need for new library space, and the Main Building was razed in 1934 over the objections of many students and faculty. All that remains of the Old Main Building are its old chime bells (called the Burleson Bells), which are now exhibited as part of a permanent display outside the university's Bass Concert Hall.
Texas architect Samuel E. Gideon salvaged the bricks and stained-glass windows from Old Main and integrated them into his Austin home, Pemberton Castle.
Originally, the university planned to use the Tower as a library space, using a dumbwaiter system to carry books from the upper floors to the students requesting them in the circulation room on a lower floor. Library employees were stationed on every other floor; students filled out paper book-request slips, which were sent upstairs by a pneumatic tube. The books were sent down to the students using an 18-story dumbwaiter. This proved ineffective, and the dumbwaiter is no longer used for that purpose. The building now mainly contains administrative offices, though it does still house a three-floor life sciences library and the Miriam Lutcher Stark Library of early and significant editions of English Romanticist works.
Two separate sets of elevators serve the building; one in the front, one in back. In the floors above the stacks and below a few top-floor offices, several floors contain the university herbarium (Plant Resources Center). United States census data are compiled and analyzed on some of these floors. Lastly, two secure elevators provide access to all 27 floors of the Tower while an elevator on the 27th floor provides access to the 28th-floor Observation Deck. There is also a book elevator in the stacks that serves floors 2 through 17.
The 307-foot (94 m) tower was designed by Paul Philippe Cret. Completed in 1937, the Main Building is located in the middle of campus. At the top of the Tower is a carillon of 56 bells, the largest in Texas. The carillon is played daily.
During World War II, the university installed an air raid siren built by its chief communications engineer, Jack Maguire, atop of the Tower. As there was never an air attack on the city, this siren was only tested and never truly used. The decommissioned siren was superseded by four electronic sirens installed in early 2007.
On August 1, 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman, an architectural engineering student at the university, barricaded himself in the observation deck of the tower of the Main Building with a scoped Remington 700 deer rifle and various other weapons. In a 96-minute standoff, Whitman killed 14 people and wounded 32 more (including 1 who died 35 years later of his wounds). Two police officers and a deputized manager from the co-op from across the mall climbed to the top of the tower and shot Whitman to death.
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Main Building (University of Texas at Austin)
The Main Building (known colloquially as The Tower) is a structure at the center of the University of Texas at Austin campus in Downtown Austin, Texas, United States. The Main Building's 307-foot (94 m) tower has 27 floors.
The old Victorian-Gothic Main Building, designed by Frederick Ernst Ruffini and Abner Cook, served as the central point of the campus's forty-acre site, and was used for nearly all purposes beginning in 1882. However, by the 1930s, discussions arose about the need for new library space, and the Main Building was razed in 1934 over the objections of many students and faculty. All that remains of the Old Main Building are its old chime bells (called the Burleson Bells), which are now exhibited as part of a permanent display outside the university's Bass Concert Hall.
Texas architect Samuel E. Gideon salvaged the bricks and stained-glass windows from Old Main and integrated them into his Austin home, Pemberton Castle.
Originally, the university planned to use the Tower as a library space, using a dumbwaiter system to carry books from the upper floors to the students requesting them in the circulation room on a lower floor. Library employees were stationed on every other floor; students filled out paper book-request slips, which were sent upstairs by a pneumatic tube. The books were sent down to the students using an 18-story dumbwaiter. This proved ineffective, and the dumbwaiter is no longer used for that purpose. The building now mainly contains administrative offices, though it does still house a three-floor life sciences library and the Miriam Lutcher Stark Library of early and significant editions of English Romanticist works.
Two separate sets of elevators serve the building; one in the front, one in back. In the floors above the stacks and below a few top-floor offices, several floors contain the university herbarium (Plant Resources Center). United States census data are compiled and analyzed on some of these floors. Lastly, two secure elevators provide access to all 27 floors of the Tower while an elevator on the 27th floor provides access to the 28th-floor Observation Deck. There is also a book elevator in the stacks that serves floors 2 through 17.
The 307-foot (94 m) tower was designed by Paul Philippe Cret. Completed in 1937, the Main Building is located in the middle of campus. At the top of the Tower is a carillon of 56 bells, the largest in Texas. The carillon is played daily.
During World War II, the university installed an air raid siren built by its chief communications engineer, Jack Maguire, atop of the Tower. As there was never an air attack on the city, this siren was only tested and never truly used. The decommissioned siren was superseded by four electronic sirens installed in early 2007.
On August 1, 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman, an architectural engineering student at the university, barricaded himself in the observation deck of the tower of the Main Building with a scoped Remington 700 deer rifle and various other weapons. In a 96-minute standoff, Whitman killed 14 people and wounded 32 more (including 1 who died 35 years later of his wounds). Two police officers and a deputized manager from the co-op from across the mall climbed to the top of the tower and shot Whitman to death.
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