University College Dublin and its Building Plans

8 and the general public habitually calls this College "the National University" or, for short, "the National."

Our Constitution of 1908 was in many ways imperfect, but it was nevertheless a great advance. The College was now chartered and endowed, and though it was not given the university status and title that had been lost twenty-five years before, it at least shared in the rights and the control of a university. In its new wider scope, the College combined the Jesuit Arts College with the C.U.I. Medical School, and embraced the new faculties of Science, Commerce, Law, Engineering and Architechture, to which others might be added; Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine have in the course of time been added. The endowment was modest, but it was experimental, and there was every reason to expect that it would soon be increased. When we opened in November 1909 it may well have been thought that we had before us a long period of steady development.

But 1909 was very close to 1914, to the first world war and the Irish revolution, beyond which lay a succession of further troubles. In some ways we have thriven in these rough times more than the founders of fifty years ago could forsee; but we have also passed through dangers and difficulties beyond their ken. We have multiplied in student numbers, more than eightfold in fifty years - from 530 to 4,500. Everywhere, of course, university numbers have been enlarged by the twentieth-century transformation of society and the new requirements of administration and applied science. But in our case special causes operated. Catholic and nationalist Ireland had been waiting a long time for a proper university, so that students rushed to it when it came. A new state and a new economy were in the process of creation; University College, from its very foundation, produced in large proportion the men who were to direct the new independent Ireland.

A growing university needs more buildings, equipment, and staff; a rapidly growing one must present alarming bills to the State, which is its biggest source of revenue. Science and technology, in particular, have become more and more expensive every year.

It might be thought that one of the first actions of a native Irish government would have been to build and endow this College as well as possible, and to encourage its expansion. The new State did in fact

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transfer to us the former Royal College of Science, with its Schools of Agriculture and Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. But we had had a revolution and a civil war, there was much to be rebuilt; and there were many things for the new State to undertake which seemed more urgent than the building and endowment of a university. Then came years of economic depression, and the war of 1939. During these years our numbers and our needs grew rapidly and the State did little to help us. Our revenue, small at the start, tended always to diminish in real value and in relation to our needs. Our history, therefore, has been largely one of a struggle to make ends meet, to do things much more cheaply than they are done elsewhere, while trying to do them well. It must be added however that the State now proceeds on the principle that as far as possible the College should be endowed according to its needs, judged by reasonable standard elsewhere.

TOWARDS BUILDING THE COLLEGE

I. Struggle with Fortune, 1912-49

In the matter of buildings, it would not be easy to name the university as ill provided as University College, Dublin, had been and is. The College is not an institution which has outgrown buildings that were at one time adequate, but one which, properly speaking, has never been built at all.

The Catholic University, a private and a poor institution, had only a few town houses, and an old warehouse for its Medical School. The Jesuit College had simply the two houses now called Newman houe. Had there been a Queen's College in Dublin, as in Cork and Galway, we should have inherited a useful nucleus; but there was not. In 1909 we began our work in Newman House, the Cecilia Street Medical School, and the Royal University laboratories at Earlsfort Terrace. 1 We obtained a building grant of L110,000-which was half the amount then being spent on the Royal College of Science. We recieived also the old exhibition building (1865) formerly used by the Royal University in Earlsfort Terrace; these were unsuitable for academic use and were to be pulled down to give a building site. Plans were ready in 1912 to erect a new College for 1,000 students, consisting of a quadrangle with a central block (Library and Aula Maxima). When in 1919 the front (Arts) and the north side (Science) of the quadrangle had been constructed, inflated wartime costs had sunk the College so deeply in debt that work had to be stopped. That was the one and only attempt, up to the present moment, to build University College. At Earlsfort Terrace today, in less than half the building intended for 1,000 students,, eked out by some of the old building that had not been pulled down, and a few temporary structures, 2,800 students are doing their work. At the Science Buidlings in Merrion Street, designed (as the Royal College of Science) for 200, there are now 1,200. As may be imagined from these figures the congestion is very great.2

1 The laboratories were newer than the exhibition building. They were build by the Royal University for examinations, and only on these occasions wer students allowed to enter them. Such were the efects of the particular attempt to resolve the Irish university question.

2 2,800 and 1,200 are the figures for 1958-9; they do not add up to the total College roll of 4,500 because about 500 students do their work elsewhere-at the faculty of Agriculture, Glasnevin, the Veterinary College, etc.

The spece requirements of the Faculty of Agriculture are not delt with in this brochure as they seem to require a separate solution. Two years ago, an immediate space problem at Glasnevin was solved by discontinuing the residential non-university courses adn turning the old dormitories into laboratories for the university students. But the fundamental problem of this Faculty is that its farm is much to small and had become an island in a built-up area.

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II

For nearly twenty-five years after the interruption of the 1912 building plan the College continued in the hope of completing the plan; midway in that period there was a temporary alleviation, on the taking over of the Royal College of Science. We later, in view of ever-growing numbers, considered extending the buildings over the Iveagh Gardens.1 In 1946 there seemed to be a real chance that this might be done. But even thus extended, the Earlsfort Terrace site was a very small one, above all when future development was considered. The loss of part of it when a new building was erected by the Office of Works made reconsideration neccessary. An attempt was made, without success, to purchase Mespil House,, about half a mile from Earlsfort Terrace, with a view to putting part of the new Colege there and the remainder on the Iveagh Gardens. Lastly, the possibility that the College might be granted compulsory powers to buy ground adjacent to the Iveagh Gardens was investigated, and it was found that such powers could not be obtained. Much effort and planning thus ended in disappointment.

II. A FRESH START, 1949-59

It was now clear that the College must forgo the advantages of its central position and move out to a site where there would really be room for its present and future needs.2 Our ownership of the Belfield estate on the Stillorgan Road, two and a half miles from St. Stephen's Green, gave a clear suggestion.3 Belfield was surrounded by other residential estates which had not yet been sold for building, and it happened that there was a pause just then in the extension of suburban housing. In the nine years from 1949 to 1958, the College, with generous help from the State, acquired six contiguous properties on the Stillorgan Road, making a total of 252 acres. This may now be spoken of as the campus of the future College. For ten years we could only hope that it would

1 In 1940 Lord Iveagh handed over his gardens to the State, intimating that they might be used by the College.

2 It is hoped that the historic houses on St. Stephen's Green will always remain with the College; a town centre will be needed for the very important work of evening classe, university extension lectures, etc.

3 The Belfield estate was bought in 1934, to provide playing-fields. As belfield has a rather long association with the College, and as it was the nucleus to which the other properties were added, its name seems to be the one best fitted to appy to the whole campus. In these pages Belfield is used in this wider sense.

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be so; we acquired the land with government approval, but in advance of any government decision that the College should be built there. In June 1959 the situation became clear, when, upon the recommendation of the Commission on the accommodation needs of the Colleges of the National University of Ireland, the government announced its agreement in principle, subject to the approval of Dail Eireann, that the College should be tranferred to this site. During this long period of waiting, the plans or supposed plans of the College gave rise to more than a little criticism. On the other hand we were aware that Mr. De Valera, then both Taoiseach and Chancellor of the University, was stronly attracted by our plans. Mr. J. A. Costello, when Taoiseach, declared at the banquet for the centenary of the Catholic University (1954) that he hoped one or two building would be erected in the lifetime of his government.

The campus is less remote than the new sites of many British universities which have had to make a similar move, and it is readily accessible by two main traffic routes. It consists of gently undulating park-land, with much fine timber and tree-lined boundaries; it has extensive views of the Dublin mountains and the sea. On it are a number of fine old houses, all of which will serve the College usefully for a good many years; some are likely to be permanently preserved.

It seems probable that future generations will regard as a blessing in disquise the difficulties and anxieties caused by the fifty years' delay the building of the College; for we shall now be bulding on a site and a scale better fitted for permanence.

III. THE COLLEGE PLANS

Schedules of accommodation for the faculties and departments have been in existence since 1952, and those likely to be required soonest have been brought fully up to date.

A tentative lay-out for the buildings was prepared in 1952, when Merville was the largest and the finest part of the College estate. In 1955, when further properties had been accquired, a new lay-out was prepared for a more central part of the campus, closer to the city. This, the "Belgrove Plan", is reproduced at the end of this brochure. It too is

(picture of a bust) I. Dr. John Henry Newman. Appointed Rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, 1851; administered actively for three and a half years from the opening in 1854; resigned 1858.

The following College publications deal with newman and his work here: Newman's Doctrin of University Education, 1954 (five lectures delivered in 1952, in commemoration of the centenary of Newman's Discourses on the Scope and Nature of Univerity Educaton); Newman House and University Church, by C.P. Curran, D.Litt; Struggle with Fortune, a Missellany for Centenary of the Catholic University of Ireland, 1954. Newman's University Sketches, in the text of 1856, were edited by Dr. M. Tierney, President of the College, in 1953. The Discourses were edited by Dr. R. J. McHugh in 1944.

(Photograph)

2. Dr. Denis J. Coffey, Professor of Physiology in the Catholic University Medical School (1893) and Dean (1905), President of the College 1908-40. He saw the College through the difficulties of its early years, of the first world war, of revolution and civil strife. Under him the 1912 building plan was begun but had to be given up, and the Colleges of Science and Agriculture were acquired. He purchased as a sports ground the Belfield estate which became the nucleus of the present campus.

(Photograph)

3. Dr. Arthur W. Conway, Registrar and Professor of Mathematical Physics 1909-40, President 1940-47. During his presidency all development of the College was held up by the second world war, but valuable plannin was done; the 1912 scheme was abandoned in favour of a plan to build over the Iveagh Gardens. In 1946 there seemed to be a real possibility that this might be done.

[Photo: Duncan.

4. Dr. Michael Tierney, Professor of Greek 1923-47, President since 1947. Dr. Tierney saw that the problem of space for the College could only be solved by moving out, and that in view of the rapid expansion of the city a site must be acquired without delay. In 1949 two properties on the Stillorgan Road were purchased. In November 1951, when the College held 170 acres, the Governing Body resolved that the best interests of the College required that its buildings be erected there. While awaiting a government decision, Dr. Tierney has had the double task of providing temporary accommodation for the ever-growing College, and of planning for the furture.

[Courtesy: Irish Press.

5. Dr. Pierce F. Purcell, Professor of Civil Engineering 1909-54. Chairman of the Buildings Commitee since 1954. He has been the chief adviser to three Presidents on all the site and building problems of the College, and played an indispensable role in the difficult negotiations involved in obtaining six separate but contiguous properties so as to form the campus.