Geology of TU buildings

 By: Mason Morgan

The University of Tulsa is often lauded for its beautiful campus buildings, but most students and faculty members never even notice the details and recurring themes of which they consist.

If you look closely at these buildings all around campus, you start to see a lingering consistency between the rocks that compose the buildings. These sandstone and limestone rocks show uniformity around campus and, only because of the age of the buildings, differ from the location they came from.

The majority of the sandstone originates from Tennessee and according to geologist Dr. Bryan Tapp; these sedimentary rocks are roughly 320 million years old. In addition, most of the limestone is from the Carthage, Mo. area and is around 300 million years old.

These two rocks compose a good amount of the facades of the TU buildings but the University didn’t stop there when it came to the geology of the campus. If you look closely at the new sign on sixth and Delaware (shown in picture), you can see a type of granite that is new to the TU campus but very old geologically speaking. This is called gneiss and according to TU professor Dr. Dennis Kerr, this red and black colored igneous rock is over 3.6 billion years old.

Many people can label campuses as beautiful even if they consist of normal red bricks. What especially makes the University of Tulsa noteworthy is the history that hides behind the buildings’ attraction.

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