The “memorial” history of the Memorial Union
By Zach Thomae, Terrace Views student editor
The year is 1919, and the past few years had not been kind to the fledgling Wisconsin Union. What could then be called the Union had been kicked out of its previous location inside the YMCA main lounge. An attempt to secure state funding for a new union had been revoked. UW-Madison President Charles Van Hise, the inspiration for the Union project in the first place, was dead.
The project to build a new Union had almost run out of steam at this point. And now, like at many other universities, creating a war memorial in honor of the students who had served in the war was more important.
That might have been the end of the Union, had Dean Goodnight not thought to combine the two projects, to build a war memorial that was also a student center for soldiers coming back to school. His petitioning was successful–Walter Kohler, Sr., then the president of the Board of Regents, formed the Memorial Union Building Committee, with the goal of raising $500,000 to build a new, memorial union.
When the project’s organizers first went public for fundraising (an almost-unheard of thing for a tax-funded university to do back then), they explained the project as a war memorial.
Original drawing done by the state architect before Memorial Union was built.
Much of the building, especially the Langdon Street entrance, was designed to be as monumental as a war memorial. Even before the fundraising was done, construction for the building began on Armistice Day in 1925, with the first shovelful of dirt dug by President Glenn Frank. To commemorate the armistice, guns were fired at the hour that the last gun had been silenced in France eight years earlier. More than 5,000 people were in attendance at the event.
Students and faculty gather at the Memorial Union groundbreaking ceremony.
After that, the cornerstone of the Union was laid in a Memorial Day ceremony in 1927. The names of all the people on the University’s military service record, as well as the Gold Star Honor Roll and the paid-in-full donors, were sealed inside.
On October 5, 1928, the Memorial Union finally opened, dedicated to “the men and women of the University who served in our country’s wars.”
To this day, the Union is still aware of its role as a war memorial–now, anyone who visits the Union in uniform is considered a member.
On behalf of all of us at the Wisconsin Union, we humbly remember those who have given their lives serving this country.
A more detailed account of the founding and funding of the Wisconsin Union is found in “An oral history of memories by Porter Butts,” an interview with former Union Director Porter Butts conducted in 1979.
You can read a timeline of the history of the Union here.
