In 1900, the recently completed Hotel Fitzpatrick in Washington, Georgia, stood out for its grand Queen Anne architecture, but even more for its technology—it offered electricity, an elevator, and a telephone. When Alfred E. Burton, MIT’s first dean (1902–1921), chronicledhis expedition to Washington to record a total solar eclipse for Technology Review, he noted the modern amenities and warm Southern welcome the hotel provided. It was a town, he wrote, characterized by “great magnolia-trees in full bloom, gardens running over with rose-bushes, shaded walks and drives leading to stately old mansions surrounded by colonnades reaching to the eaves.”