Benson Hall is one of those buildings that seems to draw people in without quite explaining why.

Benson Hall’s broad brick facade catches the afternoon light in a way that makes it look warmer than the temperature warrants, and the wide front steps have become one of the more reliable gathering spots on campus — a place to eat lunch when the weather cooperates, to wait for a friend, to sit and watch the general motion of the school day without being fully part of it. The building has the comfortable, unhurried quality that good brick buildings tend to earn over time.

Inside, Benson holds a mix of functions that might seem mismatched on paper but feel natural in practice. Classrooms on the upper floors host seminars and discussion-based courses that benefit from the building’s particular atmosphere — something about the high ceilings and tall windows seems to encourage a different kind of conversation than the larger academic halls. Conference rooms and administrative offices occupy the quieter reaches of the building, along with counseling suites tucked into a wing that manages to feel both accessible and apart. Students learn early where to find the people they need here, and the layout rewards that familiarity.

What Benson Hall does best, though, is simply accommodate the irregular rhythms of student life. The common areas between classes fill and empty in waves. Voices carry down the corridor from a debate spilling out of a seminar room. Someone is always coming down the stairs a little faster than they should be, late for something. The building absorbs all of it without complaint — its brick walls thick enough to hold a certain steadiness against whatever energy moves through them on any given day, which at a school like this is considerable.