Burdell’s Building Bracket: Round of 32, Day Two

Here’s the second half of the second round, for your voting pleasure. With just three upsets, narrowly missing a fourth, this half of the bracket was a little more pedestrian than yesterday’s slate.

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Welcome back to the biggest little bracket challenge anywhere in the business. For a refresher, here’s the bracket: Second Round Part Two.pdf. Hopefully you’re nice and familiar with the format and the contestants by now, at the tail end of weekend one of competition.

Jake Grant

Round of 32, Day Two:

East Campus:

No. 1 Bobby Dodd Stadium at Historic Grant Field vs. No. 8 North Avenue Apartments

Bobby Dodd:

The number one seed in the east campus bracket needs no introduction, but you’re getting one anyways. First home to Georgia Tech Football as early as 1905, the former ravine with a creek in the bottom was flattened by prisoners John Heisman had contracted from the local penitentiary. Though Tech didn’t make the Flats its permanent home until 1913, after bouncing around between mainly Piedmont Park, an actual park, and Ponce de Leon Park, a baseball stadium, the now-graded Grant Field was supplemented by spectator stands built by Tech students. The Hill lorded over the west side, and a baseball stadium graced the far end of the field. Later on, stands would follow on the east side, before the stadium was bowled in along North Avenue and the Naval Armory and Heisman Gym and Pool conplex were built along the north end of the stadium. The stadium, home to four national championship teams, lost its bowl during the dark years in the back half of the 20th century, while the Edge Building, Rice Center, and the mammoth Upper North Stands and Football Offices replaced the Works Progress Administration-era basketball and swimming recreation center as the calendar marched into the 2000s. Bobby Dodd Stadium at Historic Grant Field, as it is now known, remains Tech home to this day, as the oldest on-campus facility in FBS football.

North Ave:

These are Tech’s last remaining high-rise apartment buildings, having been constructed much more recently than the apartments that used to line North Avenue itself. Anyways, the four towers were completed as part of the Olympic Village in 1996 and passed to the University System of Georgia following the Games. Tech took over the entire complex relatively recently, and the North Avenue Dining Hall has steadily eclipsed Brittain in operating hours, though not in burrito quality, to say the least.

No. 4 William H. Glenn Residence Hall vs. No. 5 Donigan D. Towers Residence Hall

If you guessed this was seeded this way on purpose, you’d be right.

Glenn:

As you’ll probably realize, I seeded Glenn and Towers like this for the thrill of the potential second round matchup. However, Harris and Hopkins share similarly intriguing prospects in a matchup. Anyways, the story of Glenn is incredibly similar to the story of Towers, just this one is a little less close to a dozen lanes of the Downtown Connector.

Towers:

There was a time when it would be more appropriate to put Towers on the line opposing this one than the number five seed. However, times change, and, since its renovation, Towers is one of the nicest dormitory options for freshmen. Its name is relatively pedestrian, as east campus dorms come, but it has a long-standing rivalry with Glenn, which is more character than more dorms can say.

No. 3 Dorothy M. Crosland Tower vs. No. 6 Marion L. Brittain Dining Hall

Crosland Tower:

Despite being a historically minded fellow, I don’t think I properly understood the gravity of naming the library addition after Dorothy Crosland. The prodigious librarian did much to advance women and minorities in her time at Tech, during which she spent spells as one of the few women even on campus at all, as well as ideating what later became the College of Computing. The Price Gilbert Library and its younger sibling, Crosland Tower, both largely owe their existence to her relentless pursuit of the best possible facilities for Tech men and women and renovated tower resplendently redressed in a cascade of glass, is more than worthy of carrying on that name.

Brittain:

Almost every aspect of this building was design, made, and installed by a Tech student, from the architecture, to the stonework, to the wrought iron details. Perhaps the most elegant example of Collegiate Gothic in the sole bastion of the iconic look on campus, Brittain Dining Hall’s biggest flaw is probably its irregular hours. The building is gorgeous, the lawn it sits on is idyllic on summer days, and it is centrally located. That it is named for the Institute’s contemporaneous president is even more fitting, as he was a great champion of both Tech politically, physically, and economically, all while making great strides to improve the education and student life on campus, as seen through his legacy in programming, the physical plant, and the chapel-like dining hall that bears his name.

No. 2 Ernest Scheller College of Business vs. No. 10 Judge S. Price Gilbert Memorial Library

Scheller:

The Scheller College of Business is the greatest place in the world. I refuse to let this column become agitprop for the M-Train, a phrase which, sadly, isn’t used nearly enough today, thanks to the renaming of the school. Anyways, this doesn’t discount that the building is sparkling, well maintained, and conveniently located to such nice things as abundant parking, good food, and the places people live off campus. But, seriously, RIP Barrelhouse, you are missed.

Price Gilbert:

It seems almost unfair to rank Judge S. Price Gilbert’s namesake, especially against the newly renovated Crosland Tower, while it awaits completion of its own makeover. However, it is undoubtedly true that the building, now over half a century old, was ready to be remade and refreshed, and the ongoing process is fortunately well underway. When it was closed, though, the stairwells were narrow, the rotunda in front of the original façade was largely unnecessary, and the building was overcrowded with students displaced from the closed tower. However, it was quietly consistent, reliable, and always had working staplers, among similar small details, which is something unappreciated until it is gone.

West Campus:

No. 1 Campus Recreation Center vs. No. 9 Eighth Street Apartments

CRC:

The Campus Recreation Center is the second building of this purpose to be built on this site. The original, the Student Activity Center, was decommissioned after the turn of the millennium to make way for the expansion of the McAuley Aquatic Center, whose temporary stands were razed, shrinking capacity fivefold to roughly 2,000, while a fifth and sixth floor, including six basketball and volleyball courts, a running track, an indoor soccer court, and exercise rooms, were floated in. The leisure pool was permanently enclosed, while the workout floor, racquetball courts, and climbing wall were dug in on the back of the SAC footprint. The facility remains one of the nicest in the country, as well as being the best pool in the country.

Eighth Street:

When it came to ranking Eighth Street, its lack of a cool name played against it, as well as its slightly more out-of-the-way location. It’s a solid place, not particularly bad, or anything, but lacks the defining characteristics of some of its peers, like the bridge of Nelson-Shell or the CRC field views of the Sixth Street Apartments. However, if one gets so lucky, say, to have a fourth floor apartment in Eight Street West, a hidden gem of a panorama of the entire Atlanta skyline is certainly enough to warrant giving Eighth Street a second look.

No. 4 Manufacturing Related Disciplines Complex vs. No. 5 Fuller E. Callaway Jr. Manufacturing Research Center

Yup, this one is on purpose, too.

MRDC:

Odds are, if you ever toured Tech as a student, alumnus, or parent, you’ve been to the MRDC. Since it is the home of the Invention Studio, one of the country’s original and leading makers’ spaces, it, more than most other things, is a strong selling point and clear demonstrative visual when talking about the attention Georgia Tech pays to the practical application of theoretical classroom concepts. Personally, I believe this is a critical part of making a good Georgia Tech engineer, and so I’m happy to spit that line out almost word for word from Institute, though the Montogomery Machining Mall is subtly a much more impressive collection of technology. When viewed from the air, the story goes is that it’s intended to resemble a motor, though from the ground, the large, extraneous concrete cylinders encasing all of the wings just look kind of weird.

MaRC:

The greatest competition in all of undergraduate engineering plays out on the floor of the Callaway MaRC three times every year. Upwards of 300 kids, armed with 75 machines that, if we’re being honest, for the most part look the same, go head to head to head to head in four-way competitions for grades, validation, or, at the very least, hoping to avoid embarrassment in front of their peers, professors, and the hundreds of spectators climbing the scaffolding all the way up four floors into the rafters. This competition, the culmination of ME 2110 - Creative Decisions and Design, a class that sees hundreds of dollars, hours of man-hours, and angsty texts between group members, is perhaps the most defining moment of many a young mechanical engineer’s career, and, bracketed against the trademark aesthetic, a rainbow of colored pipes, and thankfully marks the end of two months of pure struggle, though, in the end, it is almost definitely more than worth it.

No. 3 Joseph B. Whitehead Student Health Center vs. No. 6 West Village Dining Commons

Stamps:

I try not to let my personal vendetta against Tech Dentistry bias my opinion here. It’s a new, affordable enough, and reasonably easy to use. Other than that, I don’t have much bad to say or much else good to say, either.

Willage:

Why is Willage ranked this high? It shouldn’t be. I once heard it described as “Home Depot chic” and so I’ll roll with that. Its concrete floors are already cracking, a much-too-high percentage of the walls are covered in pressed wood, and the food quality has taken a dip since it opened its doors. However, it is one thing George and Irene’s Culinary Experience (Woody’s Dining Hall) never was, be it 8:00 AM, 3:00 in the afternoon, or 9:00 at night, and that’s consistent. It has a heinous lack of vernacular Tech architecture other than its vague “CULC-ified” look - no red brick is a crime, especially when the outside already has yellow brick cladding. But, Panera and Starbucks are nice additions to the neighborhood, and the views from the top are the gold standard.

No. 2 J. Erskine Love Jr. Manufacturing Building vs. No. 10 Georgia Tech Lorraine

Love:

The Love Building, like its older sibling, the MRDC, is a split affair between Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. The atrium is one of the more stunning architectural features on campus, and whoever has the second floor office overhanging the main lobby is quite lucky to be sitting in all that natural light. Unlike most current Tech architecture, it isn’t overdone and excessively postmodern, but rather more like the next logical evolution of the vernacular brick style, like how Tech has a variety of styles, current to the time in which they were built, from Victorian to Gothic to Modern to the present day, always with the uniting bands of red brick.

Georgia Tech Lorraine:

[in very affected speech] GTL? [clears throat] Oh my gosh, my time in Metz was so unique. Taking trains, sorry TGVs, if you know you know, to, like, all the best cities in the world every weekend was life changing. Weeknights at the Comedie Club were, just, so awesome, and I felt like one of the locals when I went there or walked to Paul after class. In Paris, we took the Metro, you know, I think in America they call it the subway, sorry, all around town on Bastille Day. Seeing France win the World Cup was incredible! Allez les bleus! I had such a wild time in Amsterdam. And Barcelona. And Prague. And Brussels. You know? Just go on the bar crawls everywhere, they’re all great. Oh, and the nightclub in the Munich bus depot. Of course, I took four electives and got all As. Work hard, play hard, am I right? I really developed my wine palate over the excellent wine on the bottom self at Cora. Now, when I sit in the CULC studying, I just find my mind wandering to plan trips or remembering that tent hostel in Interlaken. What a special place and life changing summer abroad with my besties. Like, five-ever.

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Like I said, sad about the whistle, but looking forward to the Glenn/Towers and MRDC/MaRC showdown. Anyways, leave your thoughts and comments below and look for part two tomorrow! Cast your vote by Monday night at 9:00 PM for part one of the Sweet Sixteen.