
Stylistic terms can barely describe the eclectic exuberance of Old Main, a symmetrical, three-story red brick building with contrasting stone stringcourses and shawl lintels over segmental-arched windows. The advancing central tower has a steep, metal-shingled mansard roof rising from bracketed cornices that is capped by a columned belfry with its own steep roof. Corner towers have false dormers positioned halfway up their similar steeply pitched roofs. The central tower was weakened in a tornado in 1953 and removed, then reconstructed in 1973. Adjacent Georgia Burleson Hall, begun shortly after Old Main, is a near twin, the two buildings together defining the original quadrangle of the campus by lining up shoulder to shoulder, rather than facing each other.