Throwback Thursday: The many design flaws of Memorial Union
Take a look back with us each week with Throwback Thursdays, including a special series this month on the odd and interesting original design flaws of Memorial Union. For all its beauty and functionality, Memorial Union opened with a long list of design flaws, some truly baffling that will finally be addressed through the Memorial Union Reinvestment. We’re eager to hear your stories and memories from the Union as well, so share in the comments section below!
Memorial Union in 1928 showing what was conceived of as the original main entrance to the building.
Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society
Sinks without faucets. Sinks without drains. Missing electrical outlets. No storage space.
In a 1979 interview, the Wisconsin Union’s first director, Porter Butts, admitted his lack of experience when it came to building projects. Only weeks out of school at UW-Madison and with no formal architectural training, Porter joined the Memorial Union project in 1924. Over the next four years leading up to the building’s opening in 1928, the young Porter helped coordinate the completion of a building which had little design precedent at the time:
Well, when we finally got the building bid and constructed and opened, then our troubles really began because in operations we found out all of the things that went wrong or had been overlooked which simply represented bad planning.
As to the difficulties, starting with some of the most obvious and minor ones, there would be sinks noted in the kitchens showing cold water faucets but no hot water faucets. Other sinks would show both faucets but no drain. This all had to be corrected after the building was up.
There was literally no storage space provided in the building. If you are going to do a catering job, you have to have a place to put away extra chairs, tables and get them out when they are needed for banquets and so on. And none of the materials that were used seasonally, like tables and chairs on the Terrace in the summer, which had to be brought in during the winter, had a place for storage.”
But even entering the building would have proved a challenge without the forethought of Porter Butts and others with the Union. The original plans featured the current grand exterior staircase, but no significant entrance at street level. The architects were eventually convinced that no one would climb dozens of steps just to enter the building and so more ground level doors were added. Today, many would consider those ground level doors the main entrance.
And electrical outlets?
“Well, the building had already started to go up. Steel was going up. The foundation was dug when I came on the scene and I was a young fellow without any experience in building at all. But, I guess by some strange impulse, I marched through these rooms to be and the blueprints to see what was forecast for us and among other things, noticed even in my own naive way, there were no electric outlets in any of the meeting rooms, so one couldn’t plug in the floor lamps or a vacuum cleaner or anything else.”
Porter went on in his interview to say that all building projects come with complications. But today the Union has learned from the mistakes made 90 years ago. The current Memorial Union Reinvestment is organized around dozens of workshops, meetings and design reviews between Union staff and architects, all focused on delivering the best end result. And many of these designs are working to correct original building flaws.
Will a building ever be completely without flaws? Probably not. But the Reinvestment ensures at least the sinks all have drains.
Mark Bennett is project coordinator for the Memorial Union Reinvestment. A graduate of UW-Madison and self-proclaimed campus history nut, Mark has been known to lose hour of his life at a time sifting through old campus photos and stories. He’s also been known to spend similarly endless hours sitting on the Terrace.
