The new Ruth Taylor Art and Music Building is taking shape as a steel skeleton forms a visible outline of its reincarnation as the center of the University’s fine arts. During the past few months, work has concentrated on a three-story section that will connect the two wings of the complex. Above a new foundation, where the Ruth Taylor Foyer once stood, construction workers have added two new floors, laid underground site utilities, and set drill piers. Now they have begun adding ductwork and piping to the wings, as well as putting up some of the walls on the structure.

The $14-million renovation project modernizes and expands Trinity’s art, art history, and music facilities.  It started with the structures being dismantled down to their concrete floors and steel columns.  The Ruth Taylor Concert Hall was boarded up and the Ruth Taylor Foyer was demolished.  Next, since the buildings were originally constructed using the lift-slab method, entire floors and roofs were moved up or down on a platoon of jacks. On the site of the new art and art history wing (formally the home of the music department) the roof was lowered, cut into pieces, and removed.  Plans call for a new third floor to be built, topped by a roof featuring a series of angled skylights, much like the skylights on top of Mabee Hall.

On the site of the new music wing (formally the home of the art and art history department), builders have raised the height of the third floor and the roof.

Once finished, the renovation will feature soundproof classrooms and practice rooms for the music department and studios for photography, printmaking, and digital imaging for the art and art history department. The plans also include an exhibition gallery for faculty and student art. The renovated Ruth Taylor Art and Music Building will gain about 20,000 square feet making the building about 70,000 gross square feet.  The target for completion of the project is early 2006. You can see a preliminary architectural rendering of the Ruth Taylor Art and Music Building by going to this link: