This fieldstone-and-gable building anchoring South State and South University began in Ann Arbor not as bricks but as an idea. This building, erected in 1917 and one of several unions at the University of Michigan, stands on a story of student initiative that began years earlier. In 1904 the Michigan Union began not as a building but as an organization — an "all-inclusive organization" focused on providing feelings of unity for men on campus — and its first meeting at Waterman Gymnasium drew more than 1,100 students.
Seeking a home, the founders purchased in 1907 the former house of Judge Thomas M. Cooley, a longtime University of Michigan Law School professor, a "spacious, rambling fieldstone structure, with pointed gables. Professor Emil Lorch of the Department of Architecture adapted that house into a clubhouse, arranging a first floor with a large dining room, a smaller dining room, a large lounge, a game room, and a kitchen, and a second floor that included a billiard room. Let that history settle into the stone as State and University streets carry on their busy crossing beside it.