Ferguson Center Exploration

Our school has a big new performing arts center, built atop pieces of an old high school. It's quite pretty, and contains all sorts of dramatic new stuff. Scott, Jon, and I went exploring together. There was no breaking and entering, just walking through the unlocked doors to explore our own school's buildings. We of course didn't move or disturb anything. Many of us (like Jon) use this building every day, but it's the sort that you could walk around in daily and still frequently find yourself someplace new. It's my favorite kind of building, and I could spend hours and hours there.



In the background you can see a glass tower. It's the highest point on campus and you can't go there because it's locked up. In theory.

So, we found an open door to the building and wandered in.

The theatre has 1500 seats and is very pretty.




That's Scott in the box seat there.

After some exploring, we discovered that the tower door was unlocked. We climbed an endlessly winding stairway, staying away from the frosted glass sides of the tower -- it's well-lit from the inside and people outside could see shadows against it if we got too close.



Scott got a little woozy looking down through the grating.



We are triumphant climbers.



In this picture, I'm higher than anyone on campus but the hippies in JR.

We wove our way through stark, dusty corridors in the bowels of the building.



We travelled all around that area of the building. Above the theatre, we found this fascinating pulley room:



It was four or five feet high for most of it, with just a small corridor around the edge. Scott told us this is where the balance of all the stage elements is controlled. He used some terms I don't know. Maybe some of you theatre types like Abby or Dan can fill me in. Anyhow, It was a cool room.

More drab corridors, and then all of a sudden Scott opened a seemingly nodescript door to find:



We can only assume it's the green room, or some kind of room for entertaining important guests or the president.



I'm told that ballerina is striking an extremely poor pose, from a technical standpoint.

The room was marvelously furnished and had a very nice bathroom (which had a painting of two tiny shoes on the wall, by the way):



There were other rooms connected to it with a similar level of luxury:





Dry campus? Pssh. (They frequently serve alcohol at events there, apparently.)

We couldn't go out through the green room door 'cause it locked (stupid of us) and Scott and I were separated from Jon (we had stepped back and found the room unexpectedly, leaving him ahead). We eventually exited through another route, and rendezvoused with Jon back at the dorms.

All in all a fun adventure. We are among the only students to ever climb the tower, and I finally got some pictures inside the building. The doors to the catwalks over the theatre were locked, unfortunately, so I didn't get any pictures from there. Another time!