The terra-cotta and brick smokestack of UC's 1910 utility plant tumbled to the ground on an early Saturday morning in April 2003, prompting photographer Lisa Ventre to liken it to "watching a chess piece come down." No longer used and blocking Campus-Recreation-Center construction, the tower was pulled down with cables attached to a backhoe. Administrators looked for a way to save the tower's decorative top for sentimental reasons, but when the cost of dismantling, reinforcing and resetting the tower elsewhere exceeded $500,000, UC President Joseph Steger opted instead to establish a discretionary fund to salvage historic architecture. The fund was used to extract four glazed terra-cotta UC seals from the top of the tower for future installation at another campus site.

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