William Edward's University Chapel-Auditorium, completed in 1924 and now on the National Register
of Historic Places, was intended to be the first unit of an imposing central University administrative building and tower in English collegiate Gothic style.
The complex was clearly patterned after London's 11th-century Westminster Hall and 19th-century Central Lobby in the Houses of Parliament, and appropriates some design features of Proctor Hall, the graduate dining hall at Princeton University. Later UF planners would eventually decide to site Tigert Hall in an entirely different location, and build the Century Tower as an adjacent but free-standing campanile. The design of University Memorial Auditorium is unique in its application of a 14th-century hammerbeam ceiling to a cruciform structure. Each hammerbeam end presents one symbol of the land-grant quadrivium: the Scholar wears a four-cornered cap reminiscent of a 5th-century square nimbus; the Musician strokes a Greek lyre; the Engineer lifts a notched gear; and the Athlete sports a leather football helmet. In each of the two large windows above the east and west transept balconies, six scholars depicted in Art Deco style overlook the audience space.
The University Auditorium has housed the vocal art of James Melton (as a student here in the 1920's), the lyrics of Robert Frost (who annually read his poetry here), the organ performances of Palmer Christian, Marcel Dupré, Virgil Fox, and Claude Murphree - and has even served as movie stand-in for Harvard University (in Sean Connery's Just Cause, filmed here in the mid-1990's).