The decorative weather vane has crowned that Georgian domed cupola since the building’s construction in 1940. The metal pattern against the sky consists of an impressive array of belching factory smokestacks, distilling towers, and electric power grids—a fervent pre-World War II hope for economic recovery. Today, though, this picture of big, polluting industry is out of sync with our high-tech, clean factory times.

Jens Fredrick Larson, a well-known collegiate architect in New Hampshire, set the stage for several U of L buildings to be topped with weather vanes. His 1936 Belknap Campus Master Plan introduced an elaborate series of new buildings in Jeffersonian style that abounded in copper domes and cupolas with occasional vanes. Soon thereafter, U of L successfully rounded up federal funds through the Works Progress Administration and combined them with separate, private gifts to erect two new buildings. The stately, columned 1939 Law School, capped by a simple directional weather vane, was the first campus building to follow Larson’s plan. Later that year, after generous gifts from Olive Speed Sackett and William S. Speed, children of James Breckenridge Speed, architect Larson was brought back to design the new Speed School building.

Larson’s sketch arrived in Louisville in mid-March but design discussions continued for months to come. In May 1940, William S. Speed, speaking for both himself and his sister, rejected the architect’s suggestion that the weather vane bear a family logo or similar historical image. Speed told University President Raymond A. Kent, "I think something simple, such as we have on the Law Building, is preferable to something elaborate."

Records do not reveal how many attempts were made by Kent, the donors, and the architect to work out an acceptable design; perhaps other matters so dogged building planners that the issue was consigned largely to the back-burner. We do know that in early September, a full six months after discussions began, Larson sent President Kent what is at least the second weather vane sketch. It’s possible that by this late hour the donor families were out of the loop and that the final result was dictated by the president.

One repercussion from the decision to install a more elaborate weather vane surfaced at the November 20, 1940, meeting of the university committee charged with overseeing the building’s construction. The committee heard that Phillip Fink and Son, the lowest bidder on the copper roof and sheet metal work, had submitted an invoice for more money because of unexpected changes in the weather vane design. Seven months later, Dean Wilkinson took up the roofer’s cause with President Kent, noting that Fink had based a winning $9,284 bid on documents that called simply for "a weather vane." To the contractor’s astonishment, Wilkinson explained, the actual design he was later handed turned out to be more elaborate than he had ever imagined, forcing him to purchase it from an outside source for an additional $135.