The Academic Building (1914) was designed by campus architect Frederick E. Giesecke, '86 and Samuel E. Gideon, after Old Main was destroyed by fire in 1912. The beaux-arts classical design is a four-storied reinforced concrete structure faced with brick, and crowned with a copper dome. The front facade has four ionic columns supporting the classical pediment. Exterior cast stone belt course, lintels, cornices, columns and panels are made of red granite aggregate made on the construction site. The interior rotunda is framed by twenty-six doric
columns, with a mosaic of the university seal in the floor (1978), and houses a Liberty Bell replica presented to the college in 1950.
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