Subject/Object: Old Main Red Bricks

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It started out as clay dug up from a patch of ground during the construction of Old Main — which was originally just called the University Building, because there were no other buildings on campus to confuse it with. (Kind of nice to think about, isn’t it? All that quiet desert?) Then they molded it into brick and fired it on site and started stacking. That was 1887. Now it sits in a cool underground storage room, salvaged during a 2014 renovation in accordance with the Arizona Antiquities Act: an original Old Main brick. 

You don’t see brick in new buildings the way you do in the old ones. (We don’t put hitching posts outside anymore, either.) But know that should any of the signature red-brick facades in the Campus Historic District — including the original campus library (now the Arizona State Museum) and 1930s-era dorms like Gila and Yuma Hall — require repair, they’ll go so far as to age the grout during repairs to keep the look intact.