This auditorium was a test-run for the Lincoln Center (true) and the moron architect didn't design the roof to cope with snow runoff, even though the building is in New Hampshire (also true) and he forgot to put in a greenroom, even though the building is the performing-arts center (also also true).

I heard this about the University of Waterloo.

According to Snopes, it's a standard collegiate legend, [link] . However, the library at UConn apparently did have a problem with bricks falling out of it's facade, but that was just bad workmanship.

The Borg named after this dorm. Unsubstantiated but likely.

I think it was mostly wishful thinking at Northwestern, our library being one of the ugliest buildings in existance. (Plus, it let the tour guides segue into a joke about the theatre building constructors neglecting to take into account the weight of the theatre majors' egos, ba dum dum CHING.)

Thanks, FredPete.

snopes on the dorm/riot thing [link]

The shiny new Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA is a little too shiny and has to hand-sand some of the shinier bits which were torching people. Well, not torching exactly, but making unpleasantly hot.

Is Prison Right For You?

Canyon Ranch - hello, Camp Cupcake! A stint in a minimum-security facility looks like the fashionable new way to a mind-body makeover, thanks to the freshly sprung Diva of Domesticity.

"I have had time to think, time to write, time to exercise, time to not eat the bad food, and time to walk and contemplate the future," she wrote in an inspirational letter published in her magazine.

Now, images of a slimmer, softer and constantly smiling Martha Stewart have many of her high-achieving female peers wondering whether they should start trading on insider stock tips.

"A short stay in a low-security prison could be the new ashram," says Lesley Jane Seymour, the self-professed, constantly stressed editor of Marie Claire magazine.

"You'd get a nice break from the rat race - and you'd really be able to relax because it's probably one of the few places in the world that nobody can reach you," Seymour says

I would say this is an urban legend, but I thought the whole "UMASS built a library without accounting for the weight of the books" thing was a myth.

I heard this about the University of Waterloo.

U. Cincy claims it as well.

"There are no sorority houses because of an old brothel law."

And my dear old alma mater, Miami U. (Oxford, OH -- *not* Fla., please), claims this one.

As various wags have pointed out, everything built during the 1970s resembles a medium-security prison.