The Lower Quadrangle contains most of Tech's residential buildings. Centered on the southeast side of Drillfield Drive, War Memorial Hall (1926, Cram and Ferguson with Carneal and Johnston) set Virginia Tech's Gothic Revival style, followed ten years later by Burruss Hall (MO17.1). Containing gymnasium facilities and offices, the hall's five-story central tower is flanked by lower wings. An oriel window crowns the arched entrance that leads to a lobby with a vaulted stone ceiling. On each side and behind War Memorial Hall are residential halls, most of them forming quadrangles. Among the earliest are the L-shaped stone Campbell Hall with its West Wing (formerly Barracks No. 8, 1930) and the PWA-funded Eggleston Hall (1935, Carneal, Johnston and Wright), both facing the Drillfield but on opposite sides of the gymnasium. As Tech's student body grew, these three- or four-story Gothic Revival buildings could not accommodate their numbers. Inevitably, expansion led to such dormitories as the stone Slusher Hall (1972) with its large twelve-story wing.
To the northeast of War Memorial Hall, the University Club (1929, Clinton Cowgill), a two-and-a-half-story brick Colonial Revival building with a pedimented portico and a central cupola, was constructed as a private club with graduate student housing and entertainment for members. The building is one of several in the vicinity that did not employ the Gothic mode enforced around the Drillfield. The architect, Cowgill, a professor at the college, was the first resident architect in Montgomery County. He designed a number of sophisticated houses in the neighboring residential district lining Draper Road and Preston Street.