Bell Towers

Whenever I drive to work, the first thing I see of the university is all of these beautiful towers, bell towers and steeples that dot the campus. Aparently, one of the previous chancellor's of the University owned a copper mine, and so all of the roofs are copper. It's quite lovely. But recently with the dip in the economy and the soaring prices of copper, not quite as much copper is used in the architecture. The new parking garage doesn't have copper roofs like the others, but does have decorative copper panels on the sides of the building. Even private schools have to cut corners somewhere.

In the picture below, the bell tower in the front is right behind my office building, the Penrose Library. It is all that remains of another beautiful building on campus that was burned down twenty five years ago by an angry student who had received an F on a paper (or something like that). The tower in the background is the tower on top of the Ritchie Center... because all gyms and ice hockey rinks need a cathedralesque tower on top.

The Ritchie Center also holds the Coors Gym and sports venues. Nothing like having huge corporate sponsors put their names on educational buildings. But anyway, I recently had the opportunity to climb to the top of this tower and look out on Denver. It seems everything is always prettier when you're below something looking up, because once I was on top of the world (or at least this part of Denver) things didn't look so pretty.

By the way, the Penrose Library is the tan cubist building in the center of the above picture. It's the ugly building surrounded by the Ivy League brick wannabe buildings. (Sigh) Of course I have to work in the ugly building.