launched, alumni everywhere were asking: "When are you going to ask
us to contribute toward the new Union? I want to do something." Yet the
actual result of the campaign, when it was finally launched in 1915, was
in many ways a great surprise. Within a little over a year some $800,000
was subscribed and work on the new building was begun. The most
remarkable aspect of this response was the fact that no large
subscriptions were made,--$10,000 was the largest. In fact the majority
of the subscriptions came in the form of $50 life memberships which not
only made the graduates of the University participants in an institution
concerned with the fundamentals of University life, linking students,
teachers, and alumni in a common cause, but gave the graduates a home in
Ann Arbor to which they could return as of right, asking no favors. It
is doubtful if any large undertaking in any university has ever been
more widely supported by general alumni subscriptions.

The declaration of war in 1917, and the almost immediate increase in
building costs, made more difficult the completion of the building,
though a supplementary campaign in 1919 increased the funds to over the
million dollars originally asked for. Even this proved inadequate and
when the Union was finally opened in the fall of 1919, there was still
some $200,000 to be raised, secured by a mortgage on the building.
This, in effect, represented the increase in the cost of building during
the war. The completion of the Union was felt to be a vital matter and
while the wide-spread interest of the alumni in the building made it
practically certain that the necessary funds would be forthcoming within
a few years; to delay until the full amount was in hand would have been
disastrous. During the abnormal years of 1918-19, $60,000 alone was
added to the building fund through student life memberships, while the
following fall over $110,000 more was pledged this way, a practical
evidence of undergraduate interest and support.

The Union is peculiarly a Michigan product. It stands not only on the
site of Judge Cooley's old home but also on that of the boyhood home of
the architects, Irving K. Pond, '79, President of the American Institute
of Architects in 1910 and 1911, and his brother Allen B. Pond, '80.
Strong and masculine in all its lines, the building throughout is a
consistent interpretation of the artistic faith of the architects, who
have been bold enough to break with overw