Memorial Union is an Italianate Renaissance Revival-style complex built in 1926–28 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison on the south shore of Lake Mendota as a social and recreational gathering place for all students, designed partly to break down socioeconomic barriers. Before Memorial Union, the UW had no union; at its opening in 1928, then-President Glenn Frank said, "The Union is a living room, which converts the university from a house of learning to a home of learning."
On the building's north side is the Terrace, a popular outdoor space overlooking the lake. The UW's Union has gained a reputation as one of the most beautiful student centers on a university campus.
In 2015, the Union was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, considered significant as an early American college union, which was ground-breaking in supporting ideas of Progressive Era education. It is also considered significant for its association with its first director Porter Butts, who guided the Union's development from 1928 to 1968, and was a thought-leader in college unions.
History Background In the early years of the UW in the 1850s, all students lived in North Hall with two professors and their families - an arrangement modeled on Oxford and Cambridge universities in England. That home-like model ended as the university expanded into more buildings, dividing students by field of study. In subsequent years, enrollment growth far outstripped dormitory space, forcing many students to live off campus. Beginning in the 1880s, many lived at fraternities and sororities which selected mostly students from well-to-do families - somewhat fragmenting the student body along socioeconomic lines. These divisions were mitigated by extracurricular debate clubs, literary societies, drama, music, baseball and later football, which crossed class and major. Meanwhile, the number of saloons in Madison was growing. While other states prohibited saloons near their educational institutions, Madison's common council delayed, perhaps under the influence of breweries and saloon keepers. By 1893, enrollment was over a thousand, and drunkenness, gambling and hazing were significant problems among students - particularly the men.
Around 1900 a new idea began to filter over from England - a college student union - a place where students from all corners could come together for extracurricular recreation and socialization, somewhat under the guidance of the university. In 1904 President Van Hise pitched establishing a college union at the UW as a way to develop well-rounded men: ...when the student goes out into the world, there is no other part of his education which is of such fundamental importance as his capacity to deal with men, to see the other fellow's point of view, to have sympathetic appreciation with all that may be good in that point of view, and yet to retain firmly his own ideas and to adjust the two in fair proportion. Nothing that the professor or the laboratory can do for the student can take the place of daily close companionship with hundreds of his fellows.... The union should be a commodious and beautiful building, comfortably, even artistically furnished. When the students are done with their work in the evening, the attractive union is at hand, where refreshments may be had, and a pleasant hour may be spent at games, with magazines, in a novel, or in social chat. The coarse attractions of the town have little power in comparison.
In 1907 the first incarnation of the Union took shape. The YMCA on Langdon Street was in financial straits because not enough students were renting rooms there. The Iron Cross, a men's senior honor society, formed the Men's Union Board, which leased the main floor of the YMCA to use as a men's club. There they had a reading room, billiards, and sold cigars. They organized social events, dances at Lathrop Hall (the women's social center), variety shows, and get-togethers between faculty and students. These events were generally successful, and fulfilled some of the goals Van Hise mentioned above. But at the same time, the YMCA was becoming stronger. By 1916 the Y had had enough cigars and billiards and ended its lease to the first Wisconsin Men's Union. With that, the first Union moved to a house on the site of the Commons wing of the present union until 1925, then to a house on the site of the Theater Wing until 1928.
Building it After efforts failed to get the state legislature to fund a men's union building, the proponents turned to private fund-raising. The effort was led by Walter J. Kohler Sr., who felt that the UW's enrollment growth had eroded camaraderie and a men's union could remedy that. This was 1919, and the union was also pitched as a memorial to honor students and faculty who had given their lives in WWI. This effort to fund the Union was the first attempt to finance a UW building with private money. The initial fund-raising appeal went to wealthy men around the state. A second phase starting in 1921 solicited donations from alumni and the student body. Daily Cardinal editor Porter Butts urged support of the union in his articles. Classes were pitted against each other, with a cannon fired from Observatory Hill for every $500 the seniors raised. The city and faculty chipped in too, and part of J. Stephen Tripp's bequest went into it.
Before that, the Memorial Union Building Committee had visited existing college unions at the universities of Toronto, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Harvard. They came back praising Hart House in Toronto for its good lounge rooms, the common dining hall, large gymnasium and swimming pool, faculty commons and dining rooms, library, music room, sketch room, and 500-seat theater. They criticized some of the unions for not being run by students.
The exterior of the main wing was designed by University Architect Arthur Peabody and/or Frank Moulton to fit with the earliest buildings on campus - North, South and Bascom halls - and to complement the nearby Neoclassical-styled State Historical Society/University Library. He also aimed it to be dignified, given its role as a memorial building. To achieve these ends, he chose a Neoclassical/Beaux Arts style inspired by Renaissance summer waterfront villas of northern Italy. The building was clad in Madison sandstone and trimmed with grey Bedford stone.
By 1925 donors had pledged $880,000, but only half of that had been given in cash. The rest was only pledges, and with the fundraising dragging on so long, the fundraising committee feared that some donors were doubting that the union would ever be built. So in November 1925 they went ahead with a groundbreaking. Serious work on the project did not begin until a year later. By that time the project still was not fully funded, so they delayed building the theater wing and focused on only the central core of the building and the Commons wing.
The winning bid for construction was from Jacob Pfeffer of Duluth. This was at a time when organized labor was growing stronger, and many of the regents generally supported labor. Pfeffer ran an open shop, but his company won the bid and construction proceeded until some union men refused to work in April 1927, protesting the use of non-union men in the project. Pfeffer shipped in more non-union replacements from Duluth to keep the project going. The picketers began to harass the remaining workers, throwing stones. Police did not tamp down the situation. Things escalated until on May 20 a mob of union men demolished the shanty where the non-union men were living, beating some non-union men and throwing some in the lake. The worst hurt suffered a broken jaw, broken ribs, broken teeth, and one man lost an eye. Someone also threw ink on the front wall. After this and a few more incidents, public opinion shifted against the protests, the UW got a restraining order against the protesters, and things settled down.
The project had developed under the name "Wisconsin Men's Union," and was planned to be an all-male facility. Women at the UW already had Lathrop Hall as a social center. But the new union offered far more, and female students had actually supported the project more than male students. In the initial plans for the union in 1926, a small Ladies' Parlor and a few bathrooms were reserved for women, but that was all. After discussions in 1927, women were given much more access to the union, and the full name was changed from "Wisconsin Men's Union" to "Wisconsin Memorial Union". Women were still excluded from the games room, Paul Bunyan Room, Tripp Commons and the Rathskeller, but those bastions of manliness would gradually fall, until women were admitted to even the Rathskeller in 1947.
Opened on October 5, 1928, the facility is operated by the Wisconsin Union, a membership organization. Porter Butts, the first director, called it a "college union" because it combines the characteristics of a student union ("student activity center" in other countries) and a student government ("students' union" in other countries) in an organization that brings together students, faculty, and members of the surrounding community.
The initial building consisted of the five-story Central Core and the Commons Wing to the east, joined by a four-story hyphen. The Central Core's first floor held the Rathskeller, with a billiards room and card room to the west, a trophy hall to the south, and a barbershop to the east. On the second floor was Memorial Hall and the main lounge, the library and the art gallery. The fourth floor held Alumni Hall, which served as a women's lounge during the day and a ballroom in the evening. The Commons Wing held a cafeteria on the first floor, a kitchen in the basement, the main dining room, a smaller dining room, and a service kitchen. The third floor contained more small dining rooms and service kitchens. The fourth floor of the Commons Wing held hotel rooms.
Chicago decorator Leon Pescheret designed the interior of the Union, with input from Porter Butts and others. Following their plan German immigrant artist Eugene Hausler painted frescoes of student life in the Rathskeller. Some ill-conceived images of American Indians were painted in Memorial Hall. The Paul Bunyan Room was decorated to suggest a northwoods logging camp. Other rooms were decorated to suggest Oxford, Cambridge, and the colonial America.
The terrace began to take shape early on. In 1925 Arthur Peabody had recommended that the Union building be placed close to Langdon Street to leave "a wide lawn between the Union and the lake as an undergraduate playground." Beginning in 1928 Peabody's daughter Charlotte, trained in landscape architecture, designed a rectangular flagstone patio outside the Rathskeller, enclosed with walls and shaded by large oaks which the construction had spared. Steps and a walkway led to a stone-walled landing near the lake. Another flagstone path led north through the woods. Seating on this early Terrace was hickory Adirondack chairs shaded with striped umbrellas. Horticulture instructor G.W. Longenecker designed the initial plantings.
Porter Butts was named first Director of the Wisconsin Union in 1928. He had supported the Union idea as a student as editor of the Daily Cardinal, and advanced to fund-raising administrator in 1926, so he knew the history and goals well. In his 1929-30 report he described the Union's objectives: Make the UW a more human place - to convert it from a house of learning to a home of learning, as President Frank hoped. Provide a "comprehensive and well-considered program for the social life of the University." "...[stand] as the University's recognition of the importance of the leisure hour...[and] deal [constructively] with all the hours outside the classroom." Be a "genuine student cooperative enterprise, aiming to give students experience in governing and managing their own affairs."