Michigan Union

Michigan Union
Michigan Union from South State Street as viewed looking west
General information
Type	Student union
Location	530 South State Street Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States 48109
Groundbreaking	1916
Opened	1919
Renovated	1936, 1938, 1954-55 (expansions) 1994 (renovation)
Technical details
Floor count	7
Design and construction
Architect	Irving Kane Pond and Allen Bartlit Pond
Website
uunions.umich.edu/munion

The Michigan Union is a student union at the University of Michigan. It is located at the intersection of South State Street and South University Avenue in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The building was built in 1917 and is one of several unions at the University of Michigan.

The Michigan Union was at first a student group rather than a building. The Michigan Union formed in 1904 as "an 'all-inclusive organization' focused on providing feelings of unity for men on campus." Its first meeting, at Waterman Gymnasium, drew more than 1,100 students. The founders of the Michigan Union soon desired a home for the organization. In 1907, they purchased the former house of Judge Thomas M. Cooley, a longtime University of Michigan Law School professor on State Street at the end of South University Avenue. Cooley's home was a "spacious, rambling fieldstone structure, with pointed gables." After the Michigan Union acquired the Cooley home, Professor Emil Lorch of the Department of Architecture made alterations for adaptation as a clubhouse. On the first floor was a large dining room, a smaller dining room, a large lounge, a game room, and a kitchen; on the second floor was a billiard room, a reading room, a directors' room, and an apartment for the .

The Union soon outgrew the building, and in 1910, the Michigan Union hired the architect brothers Irving Kane Pond and Allen Bartlit Pond to design a new building. The Union acquired two adjacent lots, one of which was owned by the Pond brothers. In 1916, the Cooley house was demolished and construction began. Funds for the building's construction were collected by collecting financial pledges. The progress of construction soon lagged, however, due to the American entry into World War I. While still unfinished, the building was used as a Students' Army Training Corps barracks and mess hall. After the end of the First World War, the Union interior was finally completed, and the building officially opened in 1919.