President Alton W. Birdwell describing the Rusk Bulding in a Letter to M.O. Flowers, President, Board of Regents:

a. "The Thomas J. Rusk Building. As a result of the appropriations made by the Thirty-ninth Legislature we have finished and occupied the Thomas J. Rusk building. The building itself is beautiful in architecture and design, and complete so far as construction goes."

b. "The college library occupies the entire third floor. We have ample stoor rooms for books and ample seating capacity for students. The necessary rest rooms and offices have been supplied. I would be hard to find better library facilities. We have seatings in the reading room for two hundred fifty to three hundred students at one time. I desire to call special attention to our rare book room in which we hav rare books and documents, some of which have been purchased by the college, and some have been donated by friends of the college. The furniture of the room was donated to the college by the Cum Concilio Club of Nacogdoches, and was made form walnut timbers of the original Stone Fort. The college is under many obligations to this splendid group of women for the interest they have shown in the library."

c. "The second floor of the new building furnishes offices for many of the college faculty, delightful apartment for art, and class rooms for the Demonstration School."

d. "The first floor provides class rooms for the Demonstration School, a small gymnasium, with showers, for the students of the Demonstration School, a corrective room which is used by the Physical Education department of the college, a splendid laboratory for Home Economics, and the necessary rest rooms and mechanical rooms. The new building is equipped with a freight elevator and circulating cold water."

e. "We are very proud of the building, and it is serving a wonderful purpose. Our college plant now furnishes rather good facilities for the instruction of a thousand students. During the year we have done much work to beautify the premises around the college."

Birdwell's report on the 1926-27 school year. (ETRC,University Archives 38, Box 4, Folder 13)