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The University of Texas Tower is scheduled for a $70 million restoration

Posted on by Kennedy
The University of Texas Tower is scheduled for a million restoration

A cricket rests on the hand on the western clock face of the University of Texas Tower — a treasured Longhorn landmark that was once the city's tallest building. Individual light bulbs provide the dial's shine and mechanical technology that clicks every 30 seconds moves the hand forward.

The tower opened in 1937 as the university's main building and library. Decorated with seals of the world's greatest universities and names of famous Western thinkers, the tower represents the relentless ambition that has driven UT forward for a century. Steel bookcases literally reinforce the structure of the building, and the institution still has not reached the building's massive capacity for books.

The landmark cannot be seen from Interstate 35 or US 290; the gold paint peeling from the clock edges, the bumpy overlook and the burnt orange rust on the side and windows of the building cannot be seen. But to passersby on Forty Acres, the old features can obscure the tower's most notable design elements and the excellence it represents to alumni, students and UT leaders.

Now, after 87 years, university leaders are committed to making the largest reinvestment in the landmark since its construction.

Starting in November, the tower will undergo a multi-year, $70 million restoration. The goal is to complete the project by August 2027 and return the building to its “former glory,” said President Jay Hartzell.

The scope of the project, originally included in the Capital Improvement Plan by the University of Texas System regents in February, has been limited to the exterior of the building due to higher-than-expected costs. The renovation of the building itself is expected to cost $56,385,000 – about $10 million more than expected. The originally planned interior renovations and restoration of the site to improve the visitor experience will be postponed until other means are found due to the complicated workload and costs involved, Hartzell said.

In August, regents approved the newly narrowed scope and formally approved the previously agreed upon $70 million for the project: $26 million from donations, $26 million from the Permanent University Fund Bond and $18 million from the Available University Fund.

In an exclusive interview with the American-Statesman, Hartzell said the restoration will prepare the UT Tower for long-term success. He described the iconic landmark as both a unifying symbol and a “beacon for what we expect from the university.”

“When you think of the audacity of a pretty young university in a pretty small town deciding to build a building taller than the Capitol to create a library that would hold more books than we owned, that was it “Back then, a sign of boldness, ambition and the pursuit of excellence,” said Hartzell. “The tower still has the same meaning for us – what is possible for a world-class university.”

Today, the tower is the highly anticipated backdrop for student graduation photos, a symbol that glows orange during moments of university celebration, home to the familiar-sounding carillon bells, and the president's office. The renovation was initiated by regents, said Chairman Kevin Eltife, and he thanked Hartzell for his vision and the university for raising funds.

The renovation involves re-gilding and painting the clocks, cleaning the exterior of the building and restoring it to its original form, gilding key decorative elements, cleaning the brickwork, replacing the lighting (now often manual) with LED lights, and waterproofing the tower's observation deck made and the room with the instrument that controls the 52 chimes of the tower.

Larry Speck, a professor at UT's school of architecture, first became fascinated with the tower when he was 26 years old. His parents attended UT two years after it opened, and his grandparents attended the university before that, when other of UT's defining buildings were constructed. Speck spent his UT career studying and documenting the tower's history, speaking with historians and poring over old master plans and drawings.

The main building of the University of Texas, Speck told the Statesman, was designed to sit on the hill opposite the hill on which the Texas Capitol sits, so that the buildings are in constant “dialogue” with one another. Initially the building was squat in the neo-Gothic style and had problems “almost from the start”. But as executives searched for a replacement, a surprisingly fortunate turn of events suddenly allowed them to do so quickly.

UT, then relying on leasing its land in West Texas for cattle grazing to generate revenue, had suddenly encountered oil in the 1930s, at the same time that the Great Depression left the market desperate for jobs and made building a historical bargain. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration, UT applied for and secured funding for its new tower.

During a walk Thursday morning, Speck pointed out the tablets carved with letters from eight ancient alphabets that are now rusted. He remembered spending hours at the turtle pond trying to decipher these ancient letters.

“Of course people look at it and say, ‘Oh, isn’t that cool? They're burnt orange,'” Speck joked. “They're not burnt orange, they're just rusted like crazy… and when they're all restored it'll be beautiful.”

Speck said the renovation will allow the intentional elements that famed architect Phillip Paul Cret incorporated into the design to finally be exposed and appreciated, once again unifying the story behind the building and the vision behind UT's development world-class university.

“It really is a very impressive, very learned building. It’s about language, it’s about alphabets, it’s about words, it’s about books,” Speck said. “It’s about everything that goes into creating a library.”

Opposite the cricket on the dial, a rare peregrine falcon swoops into the city below on Thursday afternoon.

“That’s Tower Girl!” said Brent Stringfellow, associate vice president for campus observations and university architect, referring to the famous and rare bird that has made the tower her home.

Stringfellow has spent the last two years helping prepare for the restoration. A supporter of the project, he told the Statesman that the construction will “revive” the grandeur that makes the tower so symbolic of the university’s aspirations.

The restoration will also include elements that make the tower easier to maintain. These days, the only way to clean the exteriors of the top floors is to drive from above or build scaffolding, he said. But after the renovation, there will be a mechanism in place to make it much easier, he said, and his department is working on plans to better maintain the outdoor space. His department is also in the study phase of how best to improve the interior.

The tower will be operational during the restoration work, UT said, and the university will continue to illuminate the landmark and ring the bells as permitted to minimize disruption. The university encourages people to take their graduation photos before construction begins.

Stringfellow's hope, he said, is that the restoration will “help remind people what the tower means.”

“Now we are at the next level of our ambitions for the university,” Stringfellow said.

Hartzell said he hopes to raise enough funds to renovate the tower's interior to create a better user experience.

“You look at the level of precision and work on this building. Buildings like this are not built often,” he said. “We start with what we knew we had to do; And now we have the potential, I think the support will be there… to figure out what else is possible.”

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