Campus clubhouse returns

A new start on memories

Coffman Union's facade has been stripped of its circa 1970s glass atrium, a handsome black iron fence now protects jaywalkers, and new, shiny aluminum-clad bridges (just out of sight on either side of the picture) flare out over Washington Avenue like giant parentheses, providing an unobstructed view down the mall from Northrop to Coffman.

Photo by Tom Foley

by Rick Moore

From M, winter 2003

Generations of University of Minnesota students, whose memories of campus social life are etched as clearly as the words "Coffman Memorial Union" in the concrete above its entrance, may smile to know that the student union is back--bigger, better, and certainly much more in tune with the needs of today's students. The union reopened its original front doors beneath those engraved words in late January, and the three-year wait for a revamped "campus clubhouse" is finally over.

The new Coffman is an intriguing blend of past and present--of palatial expanse with up-to-date convenience, of old games and new gadgets, of restored art deco splendor blending into a very modern building.

Now, if students would just kindly observe proper decorum by keeping their oxfords on while dancing in the Great Hall, and try not to look too comfortable "studying" betwixt the fireplaces framing the first floor lounge, perhaps we can avoid the national media attention of the early 1940s.

When Coffman Memorial Union (named for the University's fifth president, Lotus D. Coffman), first opened its doors in the fall of 1940, it was considered a touch opulent. Maybe it was the 16 grand pianos scattered about the 235,000-square-foot building. Or the four bronze columns in the middle of the first floor lounge. At any rate, Time magazine compared the union to the "Hanging Gardens of Babylon."

Students fueled the national scrutiny with their wanton urges to dance without shoes on. Imagine! That spring, the Saturday Evening Post even paid the union a visit and conveyed a host of findings in a long and colorful article entitled "Clubhouse on the Campus."

"The students who first challenged the conventions by parking their shoes along the ballroom walls while dancing are back in their oxfords again, but only after a spirited controversy which rocked the campus....The vulgarian practice of dancing sans shoes is now officially forbidden."

Bob Tiffany, a member of the union's original board of governors, remembers Coffman as a welcome addition to student life on campus. "It was a place for social gathering, and it was a place for the post office," he says. And "there were many, many social events that I was privileged to be a part of."

Tiffany coordinated entertainment for the regular Tuesday afternoon Sunlite Dances. "We'd get the big bands that played at the Nicollet and the Radisson hotels to play for free," he says, citing Jimmy Dorsey, Dick Jergens, and Ted Fiorito as some of the bandleaders.

Long gone from Coffman are the mail boxes (the union had 18,659 in 1940) that Tiffany and others remember as a vortex of traffic and conversation. But Internet kiosks and a new computer lab with 100 stations will allow ample opportunity to communicate 21st-century style.

In fact, many of the additions produced through Coffman's $71 million renovation are a direct result of wishes expressed by students in a survey. Besides the computer lab, Coffman now has a central bookstore; a state-of-the-art, 400-seat theater with performance stage; additional quiet lounge space; and more accessible short-term parking.

The bowling alley remains with its 14 lanes (and the addition of automated scoring for the mathematically challenged). There is a game room and billiard tables as well, but the Gentleman Rules of 1940--"hats are not to be worn while playing, coats are to be left in the checkroom outside"--will probably not be enforced.

Other standbys remain, as well. The Great Hall, or main ballroom, anchors the west end of the ground floor, capped by the same 10 giant, round lights. On the fourth floor, the Campus Club offers grandiose views of the river to the south, Northrop Mall via an outdoor terrace to the north, and downtown Minneapolis through floor-to-ceiling windows to the west.

Still burrowed away in its same basement digs is the Whole Music Club, a.k.a. the Gopher Hole. The Whole, which has featured performers from Garrison Keillor and Jim Croce to the Replacements and Soundgarden, will continue to offer space for live music and other underground entertainment.

The 48,000-square-foot bookstore, built in the skeleton of the old parking garage on the ground floor, combines the bookstores from Williamson Hall, the West Bank, and the Academic Health Center. On the same level, University Dining Services cafeterias are now complemented by local and national fast-food chains including Einstein Bros. Bagels, Baja Tortilla Grill, and Chick-fil-A. Coffee from the new Starbucks can be taken into the bookstore to drink while you browse.

The University community--especially current seniors, who had but a two-month taste of a student union before it closed in fall 1999--has awaited the union's reopening no less anxiously than its initial opening in 1940. Back then, at its dedication, President Guy Stanton Ford praised the building his predecessor Lotus Coffman "dreamed and schemed about."

"I feel like an outgoing senior," Ford said in reference to his pending retirement, "who regrets that he has only one year to enjoy the privileges of this marvelous union."

Alumni and students may marvel at the new oasis in the center of campus--the campus clubhouse of the 21st century. And, rest assured, the new lounge spaces may be worthy of another visit by a prominent magazine, just to see if students are as comfortable now as the Saturday Evening Post felt they were 62 years ago:

"Lounging is shown by a student survey to rank next in favor to bowling as a Union activity, if such a sedentary skill is an activity. The seasoned lounger abounds on the campus, and in the Union he finds a well upholstered paradise. At noon the lounges overflow with earnest devotees of the art who appraise their regal surroundings with a meditative eye and settle weighty problems stemming from next season's football outlook or yesterday's blind date. Studying is not discouraged in the lounges, but if it were, it would not require many proctors to root the evil out. There is the University library, after all, for such unsocial goings-on."