UT Tower Restoration, Austin

The UT Tower restoration is the first top-to-bottom exterior overhaul the building has had since it opened in 1937. For 87 years the University of Texas at Austin patched Paul Cret’s 307-foot limestone landmark as needed. In August 2024 the UT System Board of Regents approved $70 million to do it properly.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects is leading design. SpawGlass is the contractor, according to ENR, which also reported that the budget had grown from an earlier $50 million estimate.

Project Scope

The work wraps the Main Building and the 27-story Tower one facade at a time. Scaffolding went up on the north side in January 2025, moved to the south face that August, and reached the Tower shaft above level 10 in March 2026.

The university published a progress count in September 2026. Crews had restored 439 windows, about 40 percent of the nearly 1,000 in the building. They had cleaned and repaired 54,000 square feet of granite and limestone. Roughly 16,000 linear feet of scaffolding was standing, out of a planned 22,000, which works out to just over four miles.

Some of the scope is closer to conservation than construction. The cast-iron spandrels carry gilded characters from the Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Phoenician alphabets. A single decorative artisan had regilded 114 of them at an average of two and a half days each.

The rest is more familiar: a new roof, rebuilt east and west entrances, restored clock faces, metal and wood repainted in original colors, and an LED system to replace the lighting that turns the Tower burnt orange after wins. UT counts 27 trades on the job.

The building has stayed open throughout. So has the calendar of the Tower’s resident peregrine falcons, whose nest box came down in May 2025. Work on the upper levels is timed for the months the birds are normally away.

Why It Matters

Campus landmarks tend to get restored in pieces, a window campaign one decade and a roof the next. Doing the whole envelope in one pass costs more up front and saves on the most expensive line item on a tall masonry job, which is access. Four miles of scaffold only gets built once.

Funding comes from the Available University Fund and a philanthropic campaign that is still raising money. The construction office’s schedule has exterior work finishing in summer 2027.

The university is calling the effort Our Tower: The Next 100 Years. On current evidence the first hundred did not include much preventive maintenance.

Project Team & Details