
To old Pa Pitt’s eyes, International Style architecture always looks best in black and white. Indeed, he has sometimes wondered how much the architects were subconsciously influenced by the desire to make a building that looked good in a photograph.

These skyscraper dormitories were built in 1963 to designs by Dahlen Richey of Deeter & Richey. They were poetically named A, B, and C, but students immediately renamed them Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet.
The restored entrance looks like a scene from the modernist paradise that existed mostly in architects’ imaginations. But the original architect certainly did not specify the weirdly incongruous faux-antique lanterns.