Gathering Places

Last week the Knobloch Campus Center and Alvarez Student Union celebrated its 10th anniversary.  2011 also marks the 59th year that there has been a dedicated building  on campus for a student union and an even longer history of linkages between libraries, gyms and unions.

In October of 1952. the college dedicated that Ovens College Union, heralded as a “much needed facility.”  Ovens was not a new building but a major renovation of the 1917 Alumni Gymmasium adding a cafeteria, ballroom, student store, lounges and recreation rooms.

Before the opening of Ovens, student social space tended to be organized around student groups, especially fraternities. The YMCA worked to provide some lounges and recreation space open to all students, first in Morrison Hall, the YMCA and gymnasium built in 1890 and then in the Carnegie Guest house in the 1940s.

Ovens served as the student union from 1952 to 1972 when it was demolished to make way for the E. H. Little Library.  From 1972 to 1976, the Carnegie building served again as the union, until the Grey Library building was remodeled into the Grey Union.

In 2001 and 2002, more remodeling was done –altering Johnston Gym into the Knobloch Campus Center and then the Grey into the  Sloan Music Center.

Many current students studying in the Little Library may not realize that there was a gym and a union on the same ground but it seems fitting to the college to intertwine the life of the mind, physical fitness, and creative recreation.   Then again, maybe those students who have played impromptu football games in the library have caught the spirit of older days.

Around the D offers its congratulations to the current union on its 10th anniversary and wishes for many more years.