An Ode to Crosley Tower

As this story publishes today, the building located on the University of Cincinnati’s main campus, once referred to as “A2” still stands, in its infamy, or perhaps one could say, its brutality; but not for long. Most people know this building by the name Crosley Tower. An idiosyncratic masterpiece by a world-class architect, brought to Cincinnati, then driven away from Cincinnati. A prime example of the architectural style known as Brutalism. Record setting in its construction and possibly its demolition as well. It has amassed decades of bad press, and hordes of adoring fans for a variety of reasons; therefore, this Ode celebrates the life of Crosley Tower. 

The rise of Crosley Tower 
Crosley Tower was constructed of concrete, using the “slip-form” technique, where plywood is used to make the form for wet cement mixture to be poured into and moved or adjusted as the mixture becomes solid concrete. In the case of CT, slip-form method was used around-the-clock for 18 days, until the tower was built, setting a record for being the largest continuously poured concrete building in the United States. At the time of its construction, CT was the tallest single-poured structure in the entire world.  

Joe SimonC.T. as seen from H.H. Richardson Memorial, in July 2025.The construction, as well as Crosley Tower’s design, were quite experimental. Not only was CT erected in an unconventional way, but it was also designed without any kind of decoration as an experimental fusion between engineering and architecture. Meant to serve as a building to house labs for the growing science and chemistry department at UC in the 60’s; CT was intended to be a tall building so it could vent fumes far above the rest of campus.   

Brutalist buildings tend to be made up almost entirely of concrete, sometimes brick, and glass, without any kind of cladding or decoration. That is what is typical. What is not typical is raising what could be considered a skyscraper, in one uninterrupted concrete pour, using slip-form. For this reason alone, Crosley holds architectural significance. 
                 
The architect of Crosley Tower, Charles Burchard, is as significant as his building. Burchard was a student of the Bauhaus-school founder, Walter Gropius, at Harvard’s School of Design. After which, he spent some time working for notable Brutalist designer, Marcel Breuer’s firm. Burchard had also taught at Harvard’s School of Design from 1946-53.  

Charles Burchard then came to Cincinnati, where he worked for A.M. Kinney Associates from 1953-1964. Burchard was plagued with legal difficulties due to A.M.K. Associates being originally established as an engineering firm, which later expanded into the adjacent field of architecture. When the firm received a contract for a state government building, many other Cincinnati architects took issue.  

The State of Ohio Board of Examiners of Architects attempted to take Burchard’s license to practice architecture. He was accused of acting on behalf of a fraudulent architecture firm, “permitting an Ohio corporation, to unlawfully practice architecture by acting as an agent of said corporation and as such performing services constituting the practice of architecture.” The Ohio Board of Examiners was never successful at revoking Burchard’s license, but they did make his time here unpleasant, to the point that he left A.M. Kinney Associates in 1964 to return to academia. 

Joe SimonThe C.T. conversation pit. designed to be vandalism-proof.

After leaving Cincinnati, Burchard took a position at Virgina Polytechnic Institute (now Virginia Tech) where he became the founding Dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, a position he held until 1979. He lived out the rest of his years in the state of Virginia, until his death in 1990.  

To a percentage of architecture and Brutalism enthusiasts, this is meaningful. Crosley Tower is quite a spectacular look at direct riffing of American Bauhaus design, by an architect who did not design buildings for very long, had controversy attached, and tested boundaries of what constitutes engineering and architecture. CT was not only an extraordinary build-out intended to last for ages, but also a recognizable landmark. 

Joe SimonMailboxes in C.T. A subject of intrigue for their earlier period, Art-Deco look, inside of a Brutalist build.
 A controversial lifespan 
Crosley Tower was built with the notion that Burchard and A.M. Kinney Associates were creating something futuristic that would survive for centuries. However, it only took 20 years for the University of Cincinnati to decide on removing it. CT was finished in 1969 when the flared caps were added to the top; and while it may have been a marvel of construction, it’s aesthetic and architectural style didn’t make CT a very popular building. In the following years, Brutalism fell out of favor. Perhaps it never was all that liked in Cincinnati; but overall, the times were changing, and that includes the public’s architectural taste.  

Patrice WatsonPatrick Snadon discussing Crosley Tower at cf3 event in June, 2025.Associate Professor Emeritus at UC’s School of Architecture and Interior Design, Patrick Snadon, theorizes that saving Crosley Tower would have needed to happen in the 80’s and 90’s, when the style was at its lowest point, and many other cities were already knocking their Brutalist buildings down. In 1991, UC hired a landscape architect from California, named George Hargreaves, to create a new “master plan,” for the campus, which excluded Crosley Tower from the drawings. “Advocates for saving CT should have tried to have it included in the plan—which has governed campus development ever since,” said Snadon. 

Who would have led the movement to save the building? Snadon said “I arrived at UC in 1993—after the Master Plan was already in motion—but even in 1993, I would not have been much of an advocate for Brutalism. Who was at that time?” Then he added, “however, I would never have conceded, even then, that CT should be demolished.”  

In a type of irony that Cincinnatians know, CT is slated to be demolished at the height of its popularity. Snadon remarked “anywhere else, CT would possibly have been long gone already.  Only when anything has begun to become popular again, can Cincinnati be counted on to get rid of it.”  

After Crosley Tower made an Architectural Digest list for the wrong reasons in 2017 as one of “The 7 Ugliest University Buildings in America,” it became more than a local landmark but a cultural figure, and social media darling. The subject of debates on subreddits, and comment sections all over social media.

Crosley Tower even had a UC student fan club dubbed The Crosley Tower Appreciation Club. Started by two School of Design students who’ve since graduated, Sophie Lietz and Emma Unangst; with the club sponsored by Professor at DAAP, School of Design, Maureen France in 2023, the Crosley Tower Appreciation Club became one of the largest student-run organizations on campus. The goal of the club was never to save the building, but to celebrate it.

Joe SimonMaureen France, MA. Prof. School o Design. Sponsor of CT Appreciation Club.
“We’re not going to hold onto CT forever because we understand that it‘s going to come down one way or another,” said Unangst. “We just want to appreciate it while it’s here,” said Lietz about the intended goal of the club. Attendees of club meetings socialize and honor the building in different ways, sometimes poke fun at their love of the building.

“They write love letters. Make Crosley Tower costumes. There have been some students who made Crosley Tower Valentines," said France. “It’s very much fun to see students from all over UC share ideas around CT. Students from Engineering, Design, Architecture, CCM, Arts and Sciences... students with many different degree paths.”

Maureen France has been a longtime admirer of Crosley Tower, with her East-facing design studio windows looking out at CT from a perfect vantage point in DAAP. "I've always found CT's plaza to be the perfect backdrop for photographs, and I tell my students this. It provides a clean gray background that many photographers look for when shooting portraits," declared France.

An imminent fall
Joe SimonVacant chemistry lab. on 14th floor of CT. Unused for years.Though Crosley Tower was not the most popular building around campus, parts of it were used right up until it’s last semester in the summer of 2025. Some rooms were storage, some still laboratories and offices while other areas were unusable due to leaks coming from a neglected roof. At one point in time, CT housed some of the rarest plant seeds, though at the end of the building’s life those very rooms looked like something of a dystopian movie set. Desk drawers ajar, with various papers strewn about. Print-outs, regarding various aspects of botany, chemistry, plant seed catalogs and data from 20 years ago, scattered on the desks, spilling from the drawers, and on the floor among the broken glass. 

Joe SimonIn case-of-emergency, shower in CT chemistry lab. Other abandoned labs, were nearly empty, or had antique equipment that had not been vandalized. Befitting its look and lore, CT had labs used exclusively for the study of insects, another lab for reptiles which apparently had many snakes. The most intriguing, outdated, but surely state-of-the-art for the late 1960s technology, was a room for keeping laboratory rabbits.

Joe Simon"Rabbit timer" device for feeding and climate control of lab. rabbits for up to a month.There were a few science magazines and textbooks from the 1980s, an antique microscope, and a timing device on the wall which regulated the feeding and climatic conditions of the rabbit subjects for an entire month. Looking like some kind of navigation device out of a Ridley Scott film for deep space travel, the “rabbit timer,” had two large hands for the 24-hour period, and three smaller hands with their own dial, surrounded by several gauges and meters. Presumably so the rabbits' basic needs were met while students and staff were away on break. One thing is for sure, if the animals were to escape their cages, it would not have been easy for them to find their way out of the building. 

Over the years, the use of Crosley Tower had waned into being little more than a building for offices and storage. With only a few functional laboratories, the University had intentionally downsized CT’s role on campus in preparation for its imminent demise. A towering structure which cost $5 million to complete in 1969, was estimated to cost $47.3 million to demolish in 2025-26. While the numbers might not make sense, the timing might not make sense, nor the destruction of a rare architectural example by academia; everything came down to University of Cincinnati’s longstanding desire to have Crosley Tower gone.  

Joe SimonFume hood from days of old, still has working lights.
The legacy
As the fences surrounded the building, and the demolition equipment began to arrive, the aura changed to acceptance and celebration of the distinctive feature soon to be taken away. In June 2025, a small crowd attended an event held by cf3 (Cincinnati Form Follows Function), a group which documents Cincinnati Modernist and Mid-century architecture. They gathered in Crosley Tower’s lobby, around the conversation pit. There was a full tour of the building, and the atmosphere was jovial, with many pictures, memorabilia, tributes, 3-D printouts, and stories shared by folks who had a connection to the building. With fans like these, Crosley Tower will certainly live on through other facets.  

Joe SimonJuju Stojanovic. Design student who created a CT type-face, now researching for a book about CT. One story is that of the Cincinnati Kid. Juju Stojanovic, the daughter of two UC professors described growing up with Crosley Tower being so familiar that it had been one of her earliest memories of Clifton's built environment. Later in life when Juju attended DAAP, School of Design, situated next door to CT, it inspired her. Stojanovic looked up one day and thought “it’s kind of just a huge serif… and wouldn’t it be funny to make a Crosley Tower typeface?”

During the summer of 2024, Stojanovic did a graphic and type design internship at New York-based studio, Order. The studio’s founding partner and design director, who were both DAAP alumni, asked Juju to do a type design project. When she pitched her Crosley Tower font, Order was in full support. Once she started research for the type-face project, her real appreciation began. While on a study abroad program for 8 months in Berlin, Germany, where she was to focus entirely on type design, Juju continued her Crosley project.  

According to Stojanovic, “Crosley Display” is what we call a display typeface, meaning it’s more expressive and the letters take more unusual forms than the fonts you usually use in your day-to-day. She says “in other words, legibility is not the highest priority for display faces. Display faces work well for large-size short-length text, like headlines and logos, but is not as friendly on the eyes for entire paragraphs.” By contrast “a text typeface is a typeface that is meant for high legibility for reading full pages and paragraphs.” What she did in Berlin, was she created a paragraph-friendly companion to the original project called Crosley Text. 

Juju StojanovicCrosley is an octic slab-serif display face and typographic ode to brutalist landmark of University of Cincinnati, Crosley Tower. After returning to Cincinnati, Stojanovic has continued with her personal ode to Crosley Tower within her Senior project. “For my capstone, I am further expanding, what I now call, my Crosley Type Family — a family of typefaces including my original Crosley Display, my Berlin-born Crosley Text, and the newest edition, Crosley Rebar, which is inspired by the rebar that supports Crosley from underneath the concrete.”
 
Juju Stojanovic is authoring a book about “Crosley Tower’s sparsely documented history, as well as a documentation of its community and all the “odes” to Crosley the community has made: the memes, artwork, etc. And it will all be typeset in my “ode” to Crosley, the Crosley Type Family,” she said. “I knew that there were students who liked Crosley Tower and that it had kind of been made into a meme and cultural figure, but I had no idea how wide and deep it went.”

She discovered the culture of humor that surrounded Crosley “that it’s Google reviews are filled with memes, jokes, and love letters; that there are multiple Instagram accounts devoted to it posting memes and photo edits of it; that these Crosley appreciators also make artwork, ceramics, furniture, jewelry, virtual worlds, and more,” driving her to keep learning, documenting and investigating. Like her, there are many people who will continue the spirit and memory of CT.  

Joe SimonConnor Carto. Leads a team archiving CT through 3-d scan, so it can exist in digital.Another Appreciation Club member, and student of UC’s aerospace engineering program, Connor Carto, is obsessively collecting data and documenting the building before Crosley’s doomsday. He and his brother, Sam Carto, a student of commercial music production through CCM, plus a few other students, have been tirelessly mapping CT with 3-D Lidar scanning technology so that one day “anyone who wants to can walk through,” Connor said.

When asked if he and his brother are doing this for any kind of school project, Connor laughed and said, “It’s just for fun!” then added, “Out of a labor of love, we’ve put in about 200 manhours collecting data. That’s about 10 terabytes of data, at least 6 hard drives of backups, and conservatively, we’ve spent around $1,500 in equipment.”

Primarily for the purpose of archiving, Connor wanted to archive the entire building inside and out. “My parents have no idea why I love that building so much. Because of it, and through the club, I’ve met some lifelong friends. I’ve even named my new dog Crosley because it’s so meaningful” Connor revealed. With fans like that, Crosley Tower won’t be completely fading into obscurity, though the fact is, its time is up.


Maureen FranceAn image of CT masked by fog, a ghost-building foretelling.

Patrick Snadon said, “we will probably never know,” what Crosley Tower’s legacy is within Brutalism. “When buildings remain standing, they generate interest, emotions, visits, research, restoration; when they are gone, they become footnotes in architectural history. CT was without question the most conspicuous and important Brutalist work in our region and was nationally significant.”

Snadon added, “One thing for sure, whatever replaces CT will be less important in the long run.”