LSU began in 1860 on the downtown bluff where the State Capitol now stands, occupying Army barracks built in the 1820s. Huey Long moved it south of the city in 1928 and built an entirely new Italian Renaissance campus in a single decade. The live oak-lined quadrangle and the 175-foot Memorial Tower — built in 1926 for Louisiana's 1,447 World War I dead, all names inscribed inside — are the architectural heart of what he made. The stadium he left behind started with 12,000 seats and was never torn down; expansion after expansion was added onto the original bowl until it held 102,321, the fifth-largest in the world. In 1988, a touchdown against Auburn registered on a seismograph in the geology building across campus — which is how you name a place Death Valley. The school has won five national championships in football. It has won more combined national championships across all sports than almost any other university in the country.
