R. H. Hunt worked throughout Mississippi and the South but never to better effect than at the early academic center of campus, Montgomery Hall, named for trustee William Bell Montgomery. Hunt received the commission at a time when the college was experiencing a building boom. The T-plan building was designed to house the departments of agriculture, horticulture, veterinary surgery, biology, and rural and civil engineering, as well as the university library in its apsidal end at the stem of the T. Consistent with these uses, it was technologically advanced, being “heated with steam, equipped with electric lights, and … [provided with] a complete system of plumbing.” Montgomery Hall’s imposing facade has an appropriate lineage, being a reinterpretation of agricultural villa designs, such as the Villa Cornaro (1552) by Italian architect Andrea Palladio. The hipped-roofed building with abundant windows rises three stories above a rusticated basement. Subtle changes in brick plane define its 1–3-3–3-1 bay arrangement. The three central bays are emphasized by four attached Corinthian columns with terra-cotta capitals resting on a rusticated, arcaded base and supporting an entablature, parapet, and gable flanked by balustrades. The library space originally accommodated a reading room below and stacks above. In a 2003 rehabilitation, glass-partitioned office spaces were inserted around the reopened atrium and now house the university’s Career Center.