Architecture
Throughout the building red oak is used. It is a hardwood used regularly during the period of the building's construction. Transoms above the doors were originally designed to increase air circulation, since of course there was no air conditioning. Now they serve as sources of natural light to the inner spaces of the building. Old Main was the fist building in Tempe to have electricity, but it was rather unreliable. Therefore lighting fixtures of the period all had "down" lamps which ran on electricity and "up" lamps which ran on gas when the electricity wasn't available.
Read more about this topic: Old Main (Arizona State University)
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)