The University Tower, constructed in 1966 in College Station, TX, is a 15-story concrete fortress which serves as a residential hotel near the Texas A&M University campus, and its back lot is occupied by ramshackle student housing, facing an alleyway. An elegant 2-story lobby belies the bewildering corridors and details to be found past the electro-magnetically locked door to the guest floors:
The building is filled with anachronisms and oddities; junk strewn behind Coke machines on the upper floor lobbies, where wooden doors lead to hallways painted in 3 different shades of off-grey; mirrors lining ceilings above elevator portals; a mysteriously elegant swimming pool room off the back hallway, with glass walls, huge tropical plants and a humid atmosphere.
The rooms have huge sliding glass windows which open wide to the crisp Brazos Valley air, all the way up to the top floor; and though some unfortunate individual fell to their death from one last year, no screens or bars or locks are to be seen. Doors with flip-locks on one side lead to adjoining, separate suites, where none of the light switches work, yet in the dim shadows, the beds are perfectly made.
Personal-subjective:
I wake up in my room each morning, unable to shake the dream state. I walk to the elevator, and travel down to the lobby, and thence to the parking lot, half-expecting the landscape to have shifted to match the hotel's surreal, patchwork interior. As I fire up the engine of my dinosaur vaporizer, I see that strip malls and shiny new coffins still surround me, and the jolt back to reality is swift.
Personal-subjective contribution:
kthejoker says re University Tower: A true story: I once got lost in the Tower for nearly 30 minutes. I was seriously freaked out. I couldn't find my way to the elevator. I was nearly catatonic.