The University of Texas at Austin has one of the highest enrollments in the United States, as well as one of the largest endowments. It's known as a world-class research institution, the home of a highly-ranked athletic program and even as a top "party school." Its campus in central Austin is of great interest--even to non-students. What follows is a tour of some of the highlights of the campus.
Instructions
1. Start your visit by turning right (east) onto 21st Street. To the right is Dobie Center, a high-rise dorm that sits atop a two-story mall. While not officially a part of the UT campus, it is filled with UT students. The most interesting about it is that Michael Dell, when he was a UT student, started Dell Computers in his Dobie dorm room.On the left side of the street is the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center or HRC. One of the finest special collection libraries in the world, it's home to a Gutenberg Bible, the first photograph ever made and books, manuscripts and other papers for just about every important Western writer of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. North of the HRC is Sutton Hall, a classroom building designed by Cass Gilbert, architect of the United States Supreme Court Building.
2. Continue down 21st past the Littlefield Fountain on the left and go on down to the vast Perry-Castañeda Library at the southwest corner of 21st and Speedway. The PCL is said to be shaped roughly like the state of Texas. Across the street, on the southeast corner, is Jester Center, the largest dormitory in the free world. The architecture, however, has been criticized by many as "Stalinist." Just south of Jester, at 200 East Martin Luther King, is the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art. The largest university art museum in the country, it has collections of European, American. Latin American and Contemporary paintings, as well as a great many prints and drawings, as well as plaster casts of Greek and Roman statues. The museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 10am to 5pm, on Thursday from 10am to 5pm, except for the third Thursday of the month, when it's open until 9pm, Saturday from 11am to 5pm and Sunday from 1pm to 5pm. Admission is charged every day but Thursday. At the end of 21st Street, along San Jacinto Street, is Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, where the Texas Longhorn football team plays.
3. Retrace your steps and go back to take a closer look at Littlefield Fountain, named after cattle baron, banker and university benefactor George W. Littlefield. The theme of the fountain's statuary is that the First World War brought the northern and southern states into a joint effort against a common enemy, uniting the country for the first time since the Civil War. The central figure in the statue grouping is a winged goddess, who is flanked by a soldier and a sailor, both clad in loin cloths. She stands on a ship, which is pulled by sea horses with webbed hooves and water coming out of their nostrils. The horses are ridden by naked giants with horns on their heads. Campus legend has it that if a virgin ever graduates from UT the horses will fly out of the fountain.
4. Head north up the South Mall past the "six-pack"--three classroom buildings on the east, three on the west, both groupings joined by low connecting wings and thus, to the alcohol-addled mind, resembling a six-pack of beer. Mount the steps and to the left you'll see Battle Hall, home of the Architecture Library. This building was also designed by Cass Gilbert, and has a magnificent second floor reading room with a painted, beamed ceiling. Straight ahead is the Main Building, with the 307 foot tower from which Charles Whitman shot and killed numerous people in 1966. You can reserve a tour of the tower by calling (512) 475-6633 or (877) 475-6633.
5. Climb the front steps and cross the loggia--which smells of cedar wood--go in through the front doors, pass the elevator lobby and take one of the twin marble staircases to the second floor Life Sciences Library. The main hall where the circulation desk is located is known as the Hall of the Six Coats of Arms, the arms being the insignia of the six nations that ruled over Texas. To the east is a lofty reading room called the Hall of Noble Words, after the quotations painted on its ceiling beams, while to the west is the Hall of Texas, the beams of which are painted with designs representing Texas history and culture.
6. Exit the Main Building and go down the West Mall. To the north is the Flawn Academic Center. On the fourth floor is a replica of the study of mystery writer and "Perry Mason" creator Erle Stanley Gardner, but you have to make an appointment with the HRC to see it. Just west of Flawn is the Texas Union, a student center with game rooms, TV lounges, meeting rooms, food court, bowling alley and movie theater. Once you leave the Union go north again and at the northwest corner of 24th and Whitis you'll see the red brick Victorian Littlefield House. The house is mostly given over to offices, but the first floor is furnished as it was in Littlefield's time, and you can poke around down there if you don't make too much noise.
7. Go left on Guadalupe and left again on MLK and left onto San Jacinto where you'll see a reconstruction of Santa Rita #1, the oil well that made UT a wealthy school. A recording is played around the clock there, telling the story of the oil strike. Off to the right is the Texas Swimming Center. Continue up San Jacinto to Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, hang a right onto 23rd Street, pass the Art Building on the left and, as you turn left, the Fine Arts Building and Performing Arts Center on the right and pay a visit to the Texas Memorial Museum at 2400 Trinity Street. It's open 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday, 10am to 5pm Saturday and 1pm to 5pm Sunday. Admission is free. It's main focuses are natural history and paleontology. Just to the northeast, where Trinity turns into East 25th Street, is the Law School. The building and its library are filled with antiques and a fine collection of rare poster art.
8. Turn right from East 25th onto Red River and finish your tour at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum at 2313 Red River. It's open daily from 9am to 5pm. Admission is free.
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