Analysis of artwork and architectural features on ISU campus

Beardshear Hall

The Central building of the ISU campus is Beardshear, l located on Beardshear Road. It is the central building on campus is therefore very important. The reasons why it is an important building in the campus would be its history. The second reason would be its location in the campus. The third and the last reason would be what it contains inside. The campus's history is rich with stories of this building and its role as central provider of classroom, office, and living space. No other building on campus has as much historical value as Beardshear Hall.

Beardshear was the second building built on the ISU campus. I was going there to get my ISU card and was astonished to learn that the building itself is over one hundred years old. Based on this knowledge, I was able to understand how it was so beautifully designed and built, with many of the rooms echoing the architecture and details of this period in history. It is also very exciting to enter a building that used to be home to nearly the entire ISU campus at one point. It is also exciting to have a building on campus like Beardshear Hall, which was built in the Classical Roman style using columns and large edifices (ISU Guide, 2011). This type of architecture was very popular in the early 1900's when the hall now known as Beardshear was completed.

Beardshear is a huge part of the ISU campus history because it is considered as the central building in the planning and design of the campus. Its first name was Old Main, which was used 1868 to 1938 (ISU, 2008). Then a historical event happened when the North Old Main building caught fire in 1900. This created a problem about how, when, and where to rebuild such a pivotal building. The builders finally settled on the location of the Old Main building, which burned down itself in 1902 (ISU Guide, 2011). With such a tragedy comes hope, especially in the case of the rebuilding of the Old North Main building in the spot where the Old Main building once stood.

Old Main served many important roles in the Campus of Iowa State University before it burned down. It contained housing, classrooms, the library, chapel, museums, and dining halls (ISU, 2011). The building even served as a residence hall for faculty and students. In my opinion, these roles led to the building becoming the central one on campus, and the most important as an early development of the ISU layout. Without Old Main, a university like ISU couldn't function. Many universities have similar buildings. However, Beardshear is extremely fireproof as well, given the history of fires on the campus (ISU, 2008). The building is built from a stone called scagliola, which is very similar to marble. This construction material was used with the intention of creating a building that would not burn down like the previous hall.

In 1906 the construction of the new central building was completed, which was later to be renamed Beardshear. The construction survived two fires that same year, and was completed on schedule. It cost them a lot of money, approximately four hundred thousand dollars (Reis, 2011). At the time this would have been equivalent to over 40 million dollars in today's money. Beardshear was built for a slightly different purpose than the original Old Main building. It included many classes and offices. For example, classes like mathematics, English, botany, history, and modern language departments, as well as the president's, secretary's, treasurer's, and Board of Trustee's offices were held inside it (Grund, 2009). At the end of 1970's classes were relocated to other buildings on campus. For example, chemistry was located in Gilman Hall and mathematics was relocated to Carver Hall. The only things that stayed in the building were the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, and the Office of the Vice President for Business and Finance.