herr2ck: October 2025

Photos vary, from November 2023 to September 2025.

If you couldn’t tell, the title is a reference to the album “Songsthatwewontgetsuedforbutattheendofthedayweallgonnadieanyway” by $uicideboy$. But I digress.

This last OSU-related post is meant to be a big repository for the stuff on campus that I think is cool but wouldn’t be suited for their own articles. It could be for a multitude of reasons. For example, I loved the old cyclotron labs and wanted to give them their own article, but they were demolished shortly before the Drake and I only have two photos. Since I can’t exactly go back in time and get better coverage, this is where they belong. In other cases, I couldn’t find enough information online, or I just don’t consider them interesting enough for their own articles.

Browning Amphitheater

John Herrick did not properly document this space, since he considered it “not a building,” and he only left a brief note of explanation in the archives. Much of what I know is from the Buckeye Stroll website.

Browning Amphitheater shortly after its opening in 1926. (Buckeye Stroll)

The Browning Amphitheater was built for the Browning Dramatic Society, an all-women theater group that performed Shakespeare plays. It was completed in 1926, and the first play performed there was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Eventually, the society dissolved, and the semicircular seats were used as study space by students.

Newly renovated Browning Amphitheater in 1986. (Buckeye Stroll)

In 1985, a renovation funded by Ohio Staters was completed, which added a concrete stage, lighting, and dressing rooms to the theater. It was designed by Trott & Bean. It is used by various performing arts associations today, such as Off the Lake, and the seats are still common study spaces.

The amphitheater is sunk into the hillside, so from the south all one sees is the balustrade:

Looking down at the seats and stage:

Fancy Beaux-Arts urns:

Another angle of the seats:

Clock Tower

This funky, controversial clock tower serves as an anchoring point on the “North Residential Town Square.” For whatever reason, it has its own Wikipedia article, and Google Maps considers it a “religious monument.” It was built in autumn 2017 after a $1.4 million donation by Tom W. Davis, whom the tower is named after. When it was first built, people left offerings in the form of apples to bless the Ohio State football team. This tradition has since been lost to time.

I think this comment from a Redditor sums up most people’s opinion on the tower, and gives some context (albeit unsourced) about how and why it was built:

“The Office of Student Life originally had plans to add a clock tower when they designed the newly renovated and remodeled North District of Campus, but the North Recreation Center was over budget and they couldn't fit it in.

So they decided to reach out to donors.

Tom Davis donated the 1.5 million needed for construction of the clock tower so therefore the tower was named the Tom W. Davis Tower.

The problem is...this clock tower is outright hideous. It looks out of place, it's slanted at a very strange angle, blocks the view of North Rec which is a beautiful, modern, glass front building, has a giant basically TV screen that we were told "will probably not be used to play advertisements" (which means it will, eventually), and has already broken at least 3 times since it's debut at the end of October 2017.

It became a meme because not a single damn student wanted a clock tower and we would have much rather Tom Davis donate his 1.5 to establish a new scholarship for students to help for the rising costs of college.”

Beyond most people’s irritation at OSU frivolously dumping money into some godawful clock tower when they could use it to actually help students, it’s a terrible work of architecture, too. It conforms to an axis, sure, but it is one that the other orthogonal buildings do not respond to and it seems very arbitrarily placed. Like the above Redditor said, it blocks the courtyard set up by Scott and Blackburn that leads to North Rec. It also combines traditional and contemporary forms in a very naive manner, which makes even me cringe.

Each corner is crowned with the same seal as those on Thompson Library. Where exactly these came from is unknown to me, as the trades required to carve this stuff don’t really exist anymore. OSU seal:

State of Ohio:

Northwest Territory:

United States:

Each corner also has a quote. This one is by baseball player Roberto Clemente:

Ohioan and president William McKinley:

JFK:

John Glenn:

Cyclotron

This odd demolished structure was completed in 1947 and designed by Howard Dwight Smith. It housed a small kind of particle accelerator originally inside Haskett Hall, which was the most powerful type until the following decades. By the time of its demolition in 2023, the building was long disused and covered in ivy.

Historic photo of the cyclotron when it was new. (Historic Campus Map)

One image from my old Drake post:

Another angle:

McCracken Power Plant

The current university power plant, it supplemented and later replaced the original Brown Hall Annex. Its original portion was designed in 1917 by university architect Joseph N. Bradford and was completed in autumn 1918. With a concrete frame and brick exterior, most of the building today is in an industrial interpretation of the Neoclassical style.

McCracken’s original appearance. Note the empty bays, undoubtedly to allow for future expansion. (Historic Campus Map)

Bradford designed additions which were completed in 1923 and 1929, which brought the brick structure to its current size. There were two later additions that are used as transformer and capacitor yards today, but they lack roofs and stand west of the main building.

Interior of the power plant. (Buckeye Stroll)

The building today:

Southeast entrance:

Fenestration detail and cornice:

Central projection:

Smokestack:

South facade:

Postmodern loading dock:

Mirror Lake

1918 photo of Mirror Lake. (Buckeye Stroll)

Mirror Lake was originally several bogs fed by an underground river known as Neil Run, since it was on the property of William Neil. It was tamed in the 1890s when Emerson McMillin donated money to build an observatory with the stipulation the university would improve the surroundings.

People used to drink water from the spring that fed Mirror Lake, which spurred Ohio State to build a grotto for visitors. It dried up in 1891, when a storm sewer was installed by the city, but the sewer was rerouted. After the spring dried up again due to construction, a fountain filled the lake with Olentangy River water. However, the river water was sulfuric and smelly, and it killed the wildlife remaining in the lake. In 1972, Mirror Lake was hooked up to Columbus city water. In 2014, a well allowed the usage of groundwater for the lake.

1909 photo of the islands. (University Archives)

Mirror Lake used to contain islands until 1918, when a storm knocked down trees around the lake and altered its shape. The bottom of the lake was paved with bricks by the WPA in the 1930s to make cleaning easier.

A popular pastime within Mirror Lake was swimming/diving. Students were frequently dunked in the lake until 1957, when the university banned it, and jumping in the lake was a popular way to celebrate the football game against Xichigan starting in the 1990s. However, this tradition was stopped after 2015, when a student died after jumping in the lake, and the university strictly curtails jumping today.

In 2017, Mirror Lake was redesigned to give it a more natural appearance and deter students from entering. A band of thick vegetation was planted around the lake to make it difficult to access the water, the lake’s depth was reduced and slopes much more gradually, and a quick-drain feature enables Mirror Lake to be fully drained in an hour. This system is used during Hate Week today, and the lake is mostly drained that whole week.

From Pomerene on a snowy winter day:

The popular hammocking area:

There’s always odd things being thrown in here--it was a dumpster that

day:

November 2025 - I wasn’t thrilled with my coverage of Mirror Lake, so I got some more photos on a nice sunny fall day. I love the polychromy of the leaves here:

Looking north:

The aqueous plant barrier, with the fountain and Campbell Hall in the background:

Looking south towards Pomerene:

New “grotto” and the busted water fountain:

South Campus Central Chiller Plant

This industrial building cloaked in a perforated concrete shell is covered in perpendicular acrylic panels, which let sunlight shine through at various times of the day.

Another view from the new Medical Center Tower:

Sphinx Plaza

A little area north of Thompson Library, this plaza was built as a gift by senior honorary organization Sphinx in 1982.

Concrete benches:

Ionic column and sundial:

A closer look:

St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

No Ohio State sources document this church on campus, since it technically is not a university building. It was built around when Ohio State was buying up land north of Woodruff and planning to tear the old houses on it down for new dorms. It seems like this church was allowed to stand, and still does today.

The congregation was founded with the union of two smaller churches, who built a Gothic Revival church on the current site in the late 1910s. St. Stephen’s was designed by Brooks & Coddington, a prominent mid-century firm in Columbus. Construction began in 1950 and was completed in 1953, and it is an example of the Mid-Century Modern style. It was apparently the first Modernist church in Columbus and was featured in a 1955 Life article about church design of that period.

A-frame nave:

Very glassy and Modern. The roof has clay tiles:

Central courtyard, obviously an abstracted medieval cloister:

I’m not sure what this actually is, but it reminds me of a chapter house on a Gothic church.

I-beam cross:

Sign and smaller steel cross:

Wilce Student Health Center

The Student Health Center was founded in 1915, and it was originally headquartered in Hayes Hall. The Wilce Student Health Center was designed in 1967 by Freshwater-Harrison and Associates. Its construction began in March 1968 by Knowlton Construction Co., and the building was completed in 1969. It is an uncommon example of Brutalist architecture on campus.

The Wilce Student Health Center was named after John Wilce. He was most prominently the football coach at Ohio State from 1913-1928, using his salary to pay for med school. He received a PhD from UChicago in 1919, serving as director of University Health Services from 1934 until his retirement in 1958.