Rudder Tower / Sbisa / Commies

On his birthday, UC#3 shared with us his admiration for monolithic concrete structures.

We had brunch at Rudder Tower. They had some dining room set up at the top floor – was a fave for parental units when they visited.

I will note Rudder Tower at A&M and the Stalin Seven Sister Towers are widely regarded as examples of asphyxiating architecture in repressive, misogynistic societies.
UC#3

Rudder Tower is named for former A&M President J. Earl Rudder, class of 1932 and president of A&M from 1959 until his death in 1970.

The conference and events center was completed in 1974 on the same site as Guion Hall (1918-1971). The center is 11 stories has a visitor’s center, conference rooms and auditorium. Several administrators, such as the university president, provost and vice president have offices in the tower. University Club is on the 11th floor.
My Aggie Nation

The University Club / 11^th Floor

Sbisa

We can’t talk about dining at Texas A&M without mentioning Sbisa.

Named after the iconic Bernard Sbisa, who served as supervisor of the Subsistence Department at Texas A&M from 1879 to 1926, this dining hall has been at the heart of campus life, feeding more than 4,000 students a day.

Sbisa holds a special place in the history of Texas A&M, with records dating back to an article in the Bryan Eagle, published on Sept. 18, 1913. According to the article, Sbisa opened its doors to cadets on Sept. 20, 1913, just days before the start of the school year. The first meal served was on that very day, and Aggie Dining is honoring the traditions held at the certified green restaurant dining hall 110 years later to the day.
TAMU

Bernard Sbisa

The biography of Bernard Sbisa is from the Texas A&M Foundation.

Bernard [Sbisa] was born in Austria in 1843. He moved to the United States with his uncle at age 7 and spent most of his childhood in New Orleans. As a teenager, he attended a language school, where he fell in love with a Spanish-born girl named Johanna. After operating a series of hotels as a young entrepreneur, Bernard opened the Great Southern Hotel in Galveston, Texas, in 1868. He married Johanna that same year, and the couple prepared to take root in the coastal soil.

But calamity struck the Sbisas for the first time when the Great Southern burned down in June 1877, leaving the couple homeless. To further complicate matters, Johanna was due to deliver the couple’s daughter, Rita, in October. After months of frantic job searching, Bernard found a unique opportunity at the fledgling Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas.

He became the college’s steward of subsistence, charged with feeding the 400 cadets housed in what were then the only two buildings on campus, Old Main and the mess hall (known as Stewards Hall and later renamed Gathright Hall).

When workers finished Sbisa Dining Hall in 1913, it was considered the “largest unobstructed dining room in the world.”
Texas A&M Foundation

Elder G’s rendering of Johanna Sbisa:

Stalin Seven Sister Towers

The Seven Sisters are a group of seven skyscrapers in Moscow designed in the Stalinist style. They were built from 1947 to 1953. At the time of construction, they were the tallest buildings in Europe, and the main building of Moscow State University remained the tallest building in Europe until 1990.

The seven are: Hotel Ukraina, Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Apartments, the Kudrinskaya Square Building, the Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya Hotel, the main building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the main building of Moscow State University, and the Red Gates Administrative Building.
Wikipedia

Moscow State University

Details of the Moscow State University highlight the diversity and creativity unleashed by totalitarian dictatorships.

Hotel Ukraina

Another of the Stalin Seven Sisters is the Hotel Ukraina.

The building [Hotel Ukraina] was constructed in part by several thousand Gulag inmates. When the construction was nearing completion, some inmates were housed on the 24th and 25th levels to reduce transportation costs and the number of guards required.

The hotel reopened its doors again after a 3-year-renovation on April 28, 2010, now a part of Radisson Collection Hotels Group, Moscow, with 505 bedrooms and 38 apartments. The hotel was acquired by billionaire property investor God Nisanov for £59 million during an auction in 2005.
Wikipedia

The Radisson is now on our boycott list. But we’d still like to plan a birthday celebration trip for UC#3 and his spousal unit to Hotel Ukraina. Let’s see what is available.

Sadly, the Romantic suite is not available.

But luckily, the Presidential Suite is available…

Sort of a ritzy mobster chic vibe going on here.

Wait… is that the very bed referenced in the Steele Dossier? No, that was at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton.

The 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report assessed the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow as a “high counterintelligence risk environment” with Russian intelligence on staff.
Wikipedia