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1934, the decision was made to tear down Old Main eventually. The building was unsafe, and part of it had already been condemned. The Tower was the replacement.

Gregory Gym

The Main Building

PHOTOS BELOW  BY BILL CATLETT

The Tower

The tower’s “victory lights” were lit for the first time after a victory on November 6, 1937, after Texas beat Baylor 9-7. The lighting was well received and a tradition born this year. During WWII, the tower lights had to go dark, but the “dim-out” was rescinded in November 1943.

Know Your UT Tower From the UT History Central by Jim Nicar
Commanding the highest point on the Forty Acres, the University of Texas Tower dominates the campus landscape. The Tower replaces the old main building. Opened in 1937, the Tower has become an icon, bathed in orange lights to celebrate academic honors or athletic victories or framed by fireworks at the climax of spring commencement ceremonies. To alumni, the Tower is also a tether to the University's past. It has been a backdrop for freshman convocations, football rallies, concerts, and demonstrations through the decades. To all, the 307-foot Tower is the definitive landmark of the University.

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Designed by Paul Cret, a French-born architect then living in Philadelphia, the Main Building was created to house the University's central library. Along the east and west sides of the building, a pair of spacious reading rooms labeled the "Hall of Texas" and the "Hall of Noble Words" connected to a great central reference room. Made with liberal use of oak and marble, the room was decorated with the six seals of Texas.

Tower Light, Tower Bright | The UT History Corner (jimnicar.com)

The Tower also has a shadow side with the Whitman shootings, and many troubled youths chose this venue for suicide.

The Tower is a symbol of excellence, an iconic and historical building that represents the beginning of a university reaching for national recognition. As UT graduate Marcie Zlotnik says, "I" t includes everyone, whether you’re a native Texan, a visitor, or a transplant. It transcends race, sex, and color”…. “and is a unifying symbol.

1908, UT President Mezes envisioned moving a small college to a great University. The Tower was to be the symbol of a great university. In 1916, Cass Gilbert started the design process to replace Old Main,

but Paul Cret a French architect educated at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, designed The University of Texas at Austin Tower as the centerpiece of the University’s campus. Silhouetted against the Texas sky, it was to be, he said, “the image carried in our memory when we think of the place.”

Rising twenty-seven floors above the reading rooms, the Tower contained the library's book stacks. Made of Indiana limestone, the tower was financed through a grant from the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program created during the Great Depression. As a closed-stack library, its patrons searched an immense card catalog to identify their selections and then requested books at the front desk.

Orders were forwarded upstairs to a Tower librarian, who often wore roller skates to navigate the rows of bookshelves. Once found, books were sent downstairs in a "dumb waiter" elevator to be checked out.
As enrollment and the library's holdings grew, the waiting time for a book extended to more than half an hour. The need for an open-stack library led to the construction of the Undergraduate Library and Academic Center in 1963 and the Perry-Castaneda Library in 1977. While much of the Main Building was used for administrative offices, students could still study in the grand reading rooms, containing the Life Sciences Library.

The Tower served as a library for only thirty years before students were given open access to books for reading and research in other library formats.

However, the Tower remains significant as a symbol of the University of Texas. It is the epicenter of campus activity and represents the core burnt orange spirit that defines the university's pride. The Tower speaks to the world, conveying the message that what starts here changes the world. President Hartzell has announced a significant remodel to repair the building, which has been neglected for decades.

Under President Hartzell, the Tower will undergo a significant remodel to substantially repair a building that has been lacking maintenance for decades.

In 2021 UT’s Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium was recognized by the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security as a facility of merit for demonstrating an innovative approach to safety and security.

Santa Rita - The Saint of the Impossible - makes Texas a financial power.

UT owns 2,108,966 acres of Texas land. In the mid-1800s, the legislator thought it was worthless and God-forsaken West TX brush country, and at the time, it was. The New York investors who staked corral Cromwell to drill on it were so skeptical they named the project Santa Rita after the Saint of the impossible. Cromwell drilled alone for almost two years, and on May 28th, 1923, she blew in sprang in a mist of oil from 250 yards a reconstruction of the original rig, including oil-soaked Timbers from it Gartley decorates a traffic island in the campus area a commemorative crass but eloquent. The universities 2,000,000 acres happened to include three of the hundred giant oil fields in the united states. Oil now gushes 4th for the university from thousands of oil pumps working in 19 counties. The UT system permanent fund in 1973 was approximated 2/3 of a billion dollars, comparable to Yales and approaching Harvards. The total does not include the value of its oil and gas still in the ground.