Friendship Circle, designed by Edward Avery McIlhenny, a Tabasco entrepreneur and naturalist, served as the focus of a landscape plan created for Art Deco buildings that transformed a family farm into a modern college campus between 1939 and 1941. Funding for the project came from a grant from the Federal Emergency Relief Administration for Public Works, part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and administered by Governor Richard W. Leche's administration. The circle takes its name from the stately Friendship Oak, which anchors its east end. The Class of 1956 planted the live oak to the west, grown from a Friendship Oak acorn. A magnolia tree planted in the 1970s occupies the center of the circle and commemorates the founders of Phi Mu Fraternity.