Burruss

 

looking out across the auditorium

underneath the stage

Standing on an empty stage in front of an empty, fully lit up auditorium in the middle of the night is a unique experience. There's nothing but pure and complete silence. Beneath the stage in the Burruss auditorium is a large dressing room. While this room is nothing special, I find it interesting because it isn't on the floor plans. From the dressing room, there's a door out to the orchestra pit, a set of double doors (I think they go to a storage room, but they're locked so I couldn't check for sure), and a small hole in one wall into what I believe to be the crawlspace under Burruss. If you take the two sets of stairs on either side of the stage up, you can access storage rooms, and (via a stairway in a closet) the roof. In the storage rooms on the second floor you can peel back the curtains for a commanding view of the auditorium and stage - pretty cool.

Burruss also has a mechanical room on the first floor in a rear corner of the building. It's door to the outside is occasionally propped open, but I haven't seen anything inside worth writing home about.

There's a manhole on the Norris side of the building that looks to provide access to the crawlspace. Could be cool stuff down there, but I haven't gotten to check it out yet. The manhole is out in the open anyways, and I believe that the crawlspace is full of asbestos.

Oh, one day (between classes) I stopped by the off-limits areas of Burruss to look for unlocked doors ... and stumbled upon an unlocked stairwell to the roof. I don't mean the top of the cool tower, but the lower roof (that overlooks the Burchard pyramids, GBJ, and Norris (I think that's right?). It was so cool being on top of Burruss, more so than with the rest of the rooftops I've been on - I really felt like Virginia Tech was my bitch. I just wish I had had my camera with me.

 

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