Michigan Union

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.HistoryThe 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 steward.