Agnes Scott College

This guide to the building at the heart of Agnes Scott College in Atlanta starts with a puzzle: a recent thirty-million-dollar renovation built to leave the 1891 Gothic tower looking untouched. It traces the building's early days as a marvel of modern living, wired for electric light before its neighbors and fitted with steam heat and indoor plumbing from the start. Even so, for more than a century afterward, students studied through Georgia summers inside walls that were never air-conditioned.