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An orangish glow cast strange shadows over the town of Ruston during the early morning hours of Monday, January 6, 1936. The eerie sky seemed to reflect that fiery haven ruled by the devil.
When the morning revealed the glow had risen from the complete destruction of the main building at Louisiana Tech, some predicted the end of the small north Louisiana college. But others soon saw it as a “fortunate calamity.”
The day students were scheduled to return to classes after their Christmas holidays, a fire struck “Old Main,” the primary administrative and classroom building and the symbol of the school’s early growth since its founding in 1894.
However, the opportunity for the erection of expanded and up-to-date facilities following the fire led some members of the education community to conclude the burning of Old Main was, in the long run, fortuitous.
Fire broke out sometime before 3:25 a.m. in a biology laboratory under the auditorium at the rear of the building. Ruston, Monroe and Arcadia fire trucks responded but the fire in the massive building could not be stopped until it ran out of fuel.
Although the external walls were brick, the floors, internal walls, attic and roof, and anything constructed of wood nearly 40 years old burned quickly.
The death of Louisiana Tech, then called Louisiana Polytechnic Institute, was a given, according to the pessimists. No small school like Tech could survive the loss of a huge building like the Old Main, the largest structure on campus, containing administrative offices, classrooms, laboratories, and an auditorium.
Before the flames, Old Main overshadowed the other structures on campus, both in size and import, with most classrooms and offices housed within its brick walls. Large oaks surrounded the building which faced the Everett Street bridge over the adjacent railroad tracks. Brick columns marking the original entrance to the campus framed Old Main in an image familiar to its students.
Those columns remain near the bridge.
The fire was a crushing loss to the 41-year old school originally named the Louisiana Industrial Institute but informally known as Tech. Old Main had been erected in 1895, the year after the founding of the university. The original two-story brick building contained eight large classrooms, a large auditorium, a chemical laboratory, and two offices. Old Main was practically synonymous with Tech.
The next year, a three-story brick wing was added to the east side of the building, and in 1897 a similar wing was added to the west side. In 1902, a two-story wing was added to the south side of the central portion of the building.
By the time of the fire in 1936, Old Main housed the school’s executive offices, the printing plant and publications offices, extension division offices, the commerce, English, art and mathematics departments, biology and agricultural laboratories, 19 classrooms, the post office, the auditorium, and the department of buildings and grounds.
The loss of the structure was estimated at approximately $250,000, not counting lab equipment, musical instruments, all the new band uniforms, library books, and the bookstore contents. That’s equivalent to about $6 million in 2025 money but with current labor costs and building codes, a comparable structure could not be replaced for that today.
Fortunately, most of the university’s records of student grades survived the inferno due to the acquisition of a new fireproof safe by the registrar’s office. Only reports for students during Tech’s first five years of the college, ledgers kept outside the outside the safe, were destroyed.
Students and faculty were unaware of the catastrophe until they appeared on campus that morning for their 8:00 a.m. classes. Within 24 hours, school officials arranged new meeting places for each one of the displaced classes.
A student newspaper editorial a few weeks later expressed alarm that Tech could not survive the devastating loss. But, the paper observed, 1,100 students showed their confidence in Tech’s endurance by registering for the next semester.
Officials moved rapidly to initiate construction of a new building. The foundation of the new administration building, Leche Hall—later renamed Keeney Hall—was laid on June 3, 1936, and was ready for occupancy in January 1937, just one year after the burning of Old Main. In the meantime, a temporary building was constructed quickly of rough planking with a tar paper roof, sawdust floor, and pine benches to provide temporary auditorium space. It was christened the Wigwam.
The construction continued in 1938 under Tech president E. S. Richardson. On February 22, 1941, seven new buildings were dedicated, having cost over $2,000,000 in state and federal funds. In addition, existing buildings received extensive renovations. New sidewalks and landscaping of the campus were completed.
Along with Keeny Hall, the new buildings to replace Old Main were Howard Auditorium, named for Harry Howard, Tech’s first graduate and the university’s treasurer for 40 years; a new dining hall; the woman’s dormitory, named for James B. Aswell, Tech president from 1900 to 1904; Robinson Hall, a men’s dormitory named for W. C. Robinson, Tech president in 1899 to 1900; a new power plant and laundry; the agricultural laboratory; and Bogard Hall, the engineering building.
From the single main building erected in 1895 to accommodate six faculty and 200 students, Tech had grown to 30 buildings and approximately in 2,100 students by 1941.
In other words, the burning of Old Main could be described as a fortunate catastrophe leading to exponential growth of the campus physical plant. Another surge of construction would not occur for 30 years.
Over half a dozen buildings took the place of the supposedly irreplaceable Old Main. The building campaign prompted by the fire ensured the college would endure. It was a fortuitous disaster, prompting growth that otherwise may never have occurred.
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