Glasgow University Union - Foundation

Foundation

Students at the university instituted the idea of a union building in 1885 to help promote social interaction on campus. The union's formation was driven by members of Glasgow University Dialectic Society, the Glasgow University Medico-Chirurgical Society and the Glasgow University Athletic Club. The same group formed a Students’ Representative Council in 1886 to raise funds for the building and procured the sum of £5000 from Dr John McIntyre of Odiham, Hampshire.

In 1889 the Glasgow University Students' Representative Council obtained statutory recognition under the Act of 1889 and in 1890 they managed to raise sufficient funds to build the union.

The union was originally accommodated in the John McIntyre Building, named for a major benefactor, which opened in 1890 and was designed by John James Burnet. These premises soon proved to be inadequate however, and a new building at the foot of University Avenue was designed by the architect Alan McNaughton of Arthur & McNaughton in the Scots Baronial style and erected between 1929 and 1931, with the women of the Queen Margaret Union (QMU) moving into the John McIntyre Building in 1932. It has been the location of the Glasgow University Students' Representative Council, since the new QMU building opened in 1969. An extension to the Glasgow University Union building was designed by Keppie, Henderson & Partners and opened in 1965, which now houses four bars: Deep Six, the Gallery Bar, Altitude and Playing Fields - and the union's nightclub, The Hive.

Read more about this topic:  Glasgow University Union

Famous quotes containing the word foundation:

    No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence. As a right over a man’s subsistence is a power over his moral being, so a right over a woman’s subsistence enslaves her will, degrades her pride and vitiates her whole moral nature.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1907)

    The ability to secure an independent livelihood and honorable employ suited to her education and capacities is the only true foundation of the social elevation of woman, even in the very highest classes of society. While she continues to be educated only to be somebody’s wife, and is left without any aim in life till that somebody either in love, or in pity, or in selfish regard at last grants her the opportunity, she can never be truly independent.
    Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)

    Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.
    Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)