Dubbed the “cowlesium” by a former university president, the Stock Pavilion was indeed built to accommodate livestock shows and in the pre-Internet era served as the student staging area for each semester’s course-registration process. It has also hosted performers ranging from Sergei Rachmaninoff to rock ‘n’ roll groups. Until 1930 it was the largest auditorium in Madison, and it offered good acoustics. Politicians, including presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Harry Truman, also found a forum here. Philadelphia architects designed the Tudor Revival pavilion with yellow brick upper stories decorated with false half-timbering over a red brick first story to evoke a medieval house barn. Massive gables, three-and-a-half stories tall, dominate the facade and flank the wide Tudor-arched entrance.