Online course delivery has now surpassed on-site learning as the primary way for Americans to receive a college education. The fastest growing American colleges are now actively using online teaching and learning. The high cost of maintaining college campuses, coupled with rising educational costs and the inconveniences of matching adult student learning needs with fixed teaching schedules, are prompting college administrators to ask how a traditional campus of extensive fixed physical assets enhances the achievement of learning outcomes. Campuses with historic facilities, including 20th-century iconic buildings that may have been innovative in their time, have been challenged to justify renovating or repurposing those older structures. Why should a university save or update an older, presumably obsolete facility when a newer building might be more energy efficient or more suitable for current teaching and research needs? The answer is based in how design thinking affects overall learning. Historic facilities provide clear identities to campuses and their spaces, enhance learning by becoming focal points for face-to-face communications, and demonstrate how sustainability was achieved in the centuries before intensive mechanical environmental manipulation. (Contains 2 figures.)