[7] It also briefly hosted the office of the infirmarian, Sister Mar of Providence, before a standalone infirmary was built east of the building in 1845.

[11] The dome was made of wood and covered in tin, and it was surmounted by a twelve feet tall, 1800 pounds wooden statue of Mary sculpted by Anthony Buscher of Chicago.

The octagonal oratory under the dome hosted a $1500 solid gold crown made in France (which today is kept in the Main Building on display).

[11] The interior was decorated with 52 stands of medieval armor and a natural history museum, while the exterior featured a Cour d'honneur courtyard and a statue of Sacred Heart by Robert Cassiani, placed in 1893 and modeled after a similar one at Sacré-Cœur in Paris.

[13] In the zeal to save precious objects students threw many of the valuables from the windows, yet despite the well-intentioned effort, almost all of these were lost in crashing on the ground.

The fire fighters from South Bend arrived in time help save the kitchen, steam house, printing office, Presbytery, Washington Hall and Sacred Heart Church.

Many students, nuns and faculty narrowly escaped serious injury or death while they tried to save the Main Building's contents as parts of the structure came tumbling down around them.

[14][16] Most of the university library, the scientific equipment, the paintings and sculptures that adorned the hallways, the furnishings and furniture, students' clothes and possessions, natural and skeletal collections were lost in the fire.

[citation needed] At three o'clock Father William Corby, the university president, met with his wisest assistants and they determined that nothing could be done but close the college for the year.

[14] Father Edward Sorin, now the superior-general of the Congregation of Holy Cross, had left on a trip to Europe two days prior to the fire.

[16] General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose sons had attended Notre Dame, sent army tents and supplies for the emergency and Chicago mayor Carter Harrison Sr. presided over a fund-raising to benefit the new building.

[10] Maurice Francis Egan published his book Prelude: An Elegent Volume of Poems and donated the royalties to the building fund.

[5] Architect Edbrooke, Brother Charles Borromeo (Patrick) Harding, C.S.C, and mathematics professor William Ivers marked off the dimensions of the construction on the day of the groundbreaking ceremony, May 17, and the first stone for the foundation was laid on the 19th.

[9] This exceeded the number of experienced workers in the South Bend area, and was also scarce in Chicago because of the rebuilding effort due to the great fire in October 1871.

[18] The halls were wide and it was considered hygienic, since they had installed a ventilating system unequalled in any public building in America at the time.

[19] It replicates the pose of the statue of Mary on the Column of the Immaculate Conception in Piazza di Spagna in Rome, erected under Pius IX.

Edward Sorin, C.S.C., wanted to gild the dome in real gold, but the Holy Cross community's Council of Administration for Notre Dame deemed it too great an extravagance.

The building's style has been described as follows:Edbrooke called the finished product ‘modern Gothic’; a later University Architect, Francis Kervick, referred to the Victorian monument as 'an eclectic and somewhat naïve combination of pointed windows, medieval moldings and classical columns.'

Others have dubbed the buildings’ riot of turrets, gables, angles, corners, and oversized dome and rotunda as pure and simple 'modern Sorin'.

These dances take place on the second floor of main building, underneath the dome itself which makes them a coveted event for students to attend.

[24] The university's football team and Notre Dame Stadium acknowledge the Main Building and Golden Dome within its end zones, which each feature white nine diagonal lines impregnated into the FieldTurf at 42º (set purposefully to acknowledge the university's 1842 founding year, with the lines adding up to 18), and whose direction is purposefully pointed towards the Golden Dome and the Basillica of the Sacred Heart.