This week’s Flashback Friday shows the Brickyard at NC State in the late 1960s. Construction began in 1967 and was completed in 1969.

The project began in 1965 and was the idea of landscape artchitect Dick Bell. The area around the Erdahl-Cloyd Student Union and Harrelson Hall was frequently covered in mud, and a brick plaza was to serve as a congregating place and a pedestrian thoroughfare.

“Looking from the second floor windows of the union toward Harrelson [at night], the view is unreal. It looks like something out of a James Bond thriller or a movie about an American airbase complete with floodlights and machine guns maybe. But in the day it changes. People take to lying on the grass or sitting on the benches or eating. . . . all in all, it’s not much but it’s ours.”

—Technician, May 13, 1968

For more Brickyard history and trivia, read The facts, figures and fables behind NC State’s favorite gathering place from NC State Magazine.