South Hall - The Oldest Survivor
Photo: User:Falcorian, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
A stop on UC Berkeley Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.
This red-brick building with its mansard roof looks nothing like its neighbors, and that is the point: it is the oldest building on campus. South Hall was completed in 1873, the year the university moved to Berkeley, designed by Scottish-born architect David Farquharson in the Second Empire style, a rare sight on the West Coast.
It had a near twin, North Hall, which stood where the Bancroft Library is today. North Hall is long gone, so South Hall is the only surviving building from the university's original core.
It was built for the College of Agriculture, and over the years it has held a business school, a temporary museum for the state geological survey and an early physics laboratory. Today it is home to the School of Information, where students study data science and how people use technology.
Walk around it to see how its steep mansard roof and tall windows set it apart from the stone buildings that came later.
Getting here: Walk southeast about 150 meters from the library to the red-brick building just southwest of the Campanile.
Did you know?: South Hall and North Hall cost a total of 197,000 dollars, funded by the state legislature in 1872.
Photo op: Frame South Hall's brick facade with the Campanile rising just beyond it, old and new campus in one shot.
More on Wikipedia: South Hall
Stops on this tour
- Sproul Plaza and Sather Gate - Birthplace of Free Speech
- Strawberry Creek - The Water That Chose the Campus
- Valley Life Sciences Building - A T. rex Indoors
- Memorial Glade - The Campus Front Lawn
- Doe Memorial Library - A Palace for Books
- South Hall - The Oldest Survivor
- Sather Tower - The Campanile
- Hearst Mining Building - A Monument to Mining
- Gilman Hall - Where Plutonium Was Identified
- Hearst Greek Theatre - An Ancient Stage in the Hills
- Faculty Glade - Oaks, Creek and 4.0 Hill