{"id":3064,"date":"2016-05-01T10:43:11","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T14:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.alumni.ncsu.edu\/?p=3064"},"modified":"2024-02-01T15:39:32","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T20:39:32","slug":"heres-to-harrleson-1962-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/2016\/heres-to-harrleson-1962-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s To Harrelson 1962 \u2013 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
By Josh Shaffer<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
For more than 50 years, Harrelson Hall has loomed over the Brickyard like a flying saucer on stilts\u2009\u2014\u2009a circular freak of a building that flummoxed students with its spiral ramps, windowless classrooms and ductwork that whooshed like a subway tunnel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It spawned horror stories from students who wandered lost inside its cork-screw hallways, craned their necks to see equations scribbled around curving blackboards and struggled to make sense of restroom stalls shaped like pie slices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It inspired ridicule and pranks as much as scholarship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four agricultural engineering students drove an MG Midget up the ramp in the late 1970s. Skateboarding in Harrelson became an unofficial sport at NC State, as did roller-blading, shopping cart riding and Super Ball bouncing. (A video posted on YouTube \u2014 just search for \u201cHarrelson Hall\u201d \u2014 captured 2,000 balls bouncing down the ramp.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Harrelson\u2019s long reign as NC State\u2019s best-known oddity has expired, and the demolition date is drawing near. As the campus says goodbye to this misfit of a building, a curious fondness is emerging for the structure, which will be reduced to a heap of rubble this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Its construction did, after all, grow out of a burst of 1960s energy, a period of daring that launched the space program and urged a crew-cut-wearing nation to grow its hair into a Beatles mop. Harrelson\u2019s designers believed architecture played a vital role in shaping and improving human life, giving it zest and originality. For all their mistakes, those minds earn posthumous marks for effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n