Main Building (St. Edward's University)
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Main Building is the central administration building of
St. Edward's University St. Edward's University is a private, Catholic university in Austin, Texas. It was founded and is operated in the Holy Cross tradition. History Founding and early history St. Edward's University was founded by the Reverend Edward Sorin, CSC ...
in Austin, Texas, and formerly also of St. Edward's High School (now defunct). First completed in 1888 and rebuilt after a fire in 1903, Main Building has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1973, along with adjacent Holy Cross Hall.


History

St. Edward's University was founded in 1877 by Edward Sorin, a Roman Catholic priest who also founded the University of Notre Dame. The school was established on farmland atop a
promontory A promontory is a raised mass of land that projects into a lowland or a body of water (in which case it is a peninsula). Most promontories either are formed from a hard ridge of rock that has resisted the erosive forces that have removed the so ...
to the south of Austin. As the institution grew in the early 1880s, its leaders decided to commission an administration building on that hilltop, hiring architect Nicholas J. Clayton of
Galveston, Texas Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Galvesto ...
to design the structure. Clayton produced a large
Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
design, four stories high with tall Gothic windows; this first Main Building was begun in 1887 and completed in 1888. On April 9, 1903, the first building was destroyed in a fire; the university then commissioned Clayton, the original architect, to design a replacement for the structure, on essentially the same plan, upgraded to include modern fireproofing features. Main Building was rebuilt over the spring and summer, ready for use by the beginning of the fall 1903 semester. At the same time, another new building, Holy Cross Hall, was built alongside the new Main Building, sharing its overall design on a smaller scale. Since its first opening, Main Building has housed the administrative offices of St. Edward's College (as the school was known in its first decades) and St. Edward's University (since the university was charted in 1925); it also formerly held the administration of St. Edward's High School from 1921, when the secondary school was separated from the college, until 1967, when the high school was closed. During World War II the facility housed a military academy and flight school. Holy Cross Hall has been used as a
dormitory A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm) is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or university s ...
and has held classrooms, offices and meeting space.


Repairs and renovations

In 1922 a tornado struck the campus, tearing a hole through the south face of Main Building that required extensive repairs. The building underwent substantial renovations in 1986 to bring it into compliance with modern building codes and reinforce the exterior walls. Repairs to the exterior stonework, roofing and windows were undertaken in 2014, along with the restoration of the bell tower's original bell. Another round of exterior restorations and interior renovations began in 2016, while similar work was underway at Holy Cross Hall.


Architecture

Main Building is a roughly rectangular four-story hall,
clad Cladding is an outer layer of material covering another. It may refer to the following: *Cladding (boiler), the layer of insulation and outer wrapping around a boiler shell *Cladding (construction), materials applied to the exterior of buildings ...
with local white limestone on its northern facade, with a central
bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...
projecting several stories higher from the rear. The building is divided into three sections: two taller and bulkier wings on the east and west, and a more narrow central segment joining them, totaling a footprint. Main Building exemplifies the
Collegiate Gothic Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for college and high school buildings in the United States and Canada, and to a certain extent Europ ...
architecture that was popular among educational institutions in late-nineteenth-century America, with its protruding one-story church porch, tall
lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a pointed arch at its top. It acquired the "lancet" name from its resemblance to a lance. Instances of this architectural element are typical of Gothic church edifices of the earliest period. Lancet wi ...
s with
hood mold In architecture, a hood mould, hood, label mould (from Latin ''labia'', lip), drip mould or dripstone, is an external moulded projection from a wall over an opening to throw off rainwater, historically often in form of a ''pediment''. This mouldin ...
ing, and
turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...
ed buttresses.


Main facade

The main entry is in the center of the north facade, where a flared staircase leads up to the porch and red double doors framed by a Gothic arch with hood mold and pointed gable. Above the entrance the facade is marked by a central bay, which projects slightly forward and frames three columns of windows with another hood mold and gable, matching those on the facing of the porch. Each level of the central segment has its own style of windows: the first floor has trios of pointed-arch windows with hood molding, while the second has trios of simple rectangles, and the third has a series of small lancet windows with hood molds. A line of dentils follows the roofline, including under the high gable of the central bay. The east and west wings of the building project forward relative to the central portion, and their steeply pitched rooflines extend upward another story above the center. The north face of each wing is divided into three vertical bays by four buttresses, two on the face of the structure and two at the corners; the corner buttresses extend above the roofline to form cylindrical turrets topped with conical spires. Each bay on the wings duplicates the pattern of windows from the central facade, but the wings' central bays and gables extend higher than the corresponding bay above the main entrance.


Other features

The central tower rises from the rear of the building, its lower levels protruding from the south face. The first four stories of the tower are round and embedded in the building, supported by two heavy limestone buttresses. Near the roofline, a ring of blind arches forms a transition to a freestanding octagonal upper section; only this upper portion is visible from the front of the building. The walls of the upper section are pierced by an octagonal open arcade of Gothic arches, topped with an encircling
corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...
led
cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...
. Above the cornice, the roof forms a steep octagonal pyramid, pierced by four small gabled windows, and topped by a cross-shaped
finial A finial (from '' la, finis'', end) or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the Apex (geometry), apex of a d ...
. The sides and rear of the building are faced with brick rather than limestone, excepting the lower portion of the tower and its buttresses. The windows and gables on the other faces are similar but simplified versions of those found on the main facade.


Holy Cross Hall

Built adjacent to Main Building while that structure was reconstructed after the 1903 fire, Holy Cross Hall shares a simplified version of its larger neighbor's architectural design. The smaller hall shares the same overall center-and-wings floorplan, but on a considerably smaller footprint and only three stories high. The entire exterior is faced with the same bricks used on the sides and rear of Main Building, and it lacks the larger structure's high gabled bays, except above the main entrance on the north side. In place of Main Building's bell tower, Holy Cross Hall has a modest one-story turret.


See also

*
National Register of Historic Places listings in Travis County, Texas __NOTOC__ This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Travis County, Texas. This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Travis County, Texas, Uni ...


References


External links


Google Street View of north facade

Google Street View of south facade
{{National Register of Historic Places in Austin, Texas Bell towers in the United States University and college buildings completed in 1903 Buildings and structures in Austin, Texas City of Austin Historic Landmarks Gothic Revival architecture in Texas National Register of Historic Places in Austin, Texas Recorded Texas Historic Landmarks St. Edward's University University and college administration buildings in the United States University and college buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas 1903 establishments in Texas