Another visit to the Main Building

After never setting foot the President's office in my nearly 20 years at UT, I found myself there again last Friday and will be there again next week (making that three times in the space of a month). Friday's visit was a reception to cap off Staff Appreciation Week where we got a chance to hang out with President Powers in his office, drink wine and nibble on hors d'oeuvres (very yummy hors d'oeuvres, I might add). We also got a nice view of the rooftop garden and walkway, but after a point it got a little too hot to enjoy and we all moved back in to the office (which is in part an old library - heaven!)

While we were there, Dr. Charles Roeckle, the Deputy to the President, showed some of us around the office area and pointed out some of the neat architectural details, including a story behind the window in the previous post. Hopefully I'm recalling the story correctly, but if I get a little of the detail wrong, blame the wine, heat and the long week.

We had a horrible hail storm come through campus two years ago, and many west-facing windows were damaged or totally smashed, including the lower part of the window in the previous post (see the photo below for a view of the whole thing). The two vertical segments of the window were from the old Main Building constructed in the 1880s and torn down in the 1930s when the current building was constructed. When the window was installed in the current building, the top part was just blank, but when the they went to restore it after the hail damage, Dr. Roeckle had the top part done to match what the window had originally looked like when it was in the old main building. I thought that was pretty cool. :)