Lincoln Park Opens

The new Lincoln Park Campus opened on November 17th, 1972 with great fanfare and eager anticipation from Mount Royal and the local community. The opening consisted of an official ceremony presided over by Lieutenant Governor Grant McEwan, as well as three full days of activities. Events included an open house, basketball and hockey games, performances by the Calgary Youth Orchestra and Reader's Theatre, a ball hosted by the Student's Association, and the dedication of the Kerby Memorial Carillon Tower and the John H. Garden Meditation Centre.

The completed campus consisted of over 60,000 square meters of total space, 33,372 meters of which were designated as 'usable space' which included classrooms, offices, and food services. The rest of the campus was designed as 'flexible space' in the form of wide hallways, spacious stairwells, informal meeting and event spaces, and large multipurpose rooms that could be subdivided with partitions. Flexibility and openness were the primary concepts evident in the design of interior spaces. Traditional classroom space was kept to a minimum in order to fit the Leggett model of instruction. Even faculty and staff offices were designed to be versatile. Faculty and staff worked from clusters of desks attached to movable partitions, with administrators located in glass-encased bullpen style offices. Even the office of the Vice-President of Instruction was temporarily located in the library in an open concept group of desks surrounded by secretaries and assistants. The intention was to ensure that there were plenty of opportunities for students and faculty to interact, and to make staff as accessible as possible.

Some specialized spaces to support specific programs were unavoidable, but the prioritization of flexibility was retained. Specialized spaces included a large multipurpose laboratory that could be rearranged for different needs and class sizes, with access to the laboratory restricted for safety, but shared by all the science programs. Broadcasting students had use of a technologically-advanced television studio and two radio studios. Additionally, Conservatory students could access 37 soundproof practice and instruction spaces, which were built along the hallway of the third floor. The third floor also housed the specialized Interior Design Studio which was the largest single classroom in the building.

The number and capacity of instructional, performance, athletic, and student spaces were all far greater than those on the old downtown campus. The Ford and Jenkins Theatres could double as lecture and performance spaces and each seated over 200 people. The Wright and Leacock Theatres provided much-needed dedicated performances spaces for Conservatory students and seated 567 people collectively.

A separate building for the Students' Association never made it into the final plans for campus, however, a generous portion of the new building was set aside for students and management by the Students' Association. The Forum and the Rathskeller pub, located at the center of campus, were designed to provide a centre for student recreational activities. The Forum was a large open space that could seat up to 450 people at tables, or over 1000 people at standing room events. The Forum could also be partitioned off into four theatre-style rooms and was frequently used for dances, concerts, receptions, movie nights, and banquets. The Rathskeller, the student pub, could seat up to 175 people and was modeled after a German beer hall. The space was often used for student concerts, club activities, and cabarets. The Students' Association also ran several businesses and spaces on campus including the information center, collegiate shop, billiards hall, games room, fireside lounge, student art gallery, daycare center, and nap rooms.

The gymnasium at the old campus was built in 1949, and so was well over-capacity by the 1970s, sometimes accommodating over three times its capacity limit. The Lincoln Park Campus addressed this shortfall with two large gymnasiums, the Auxiliary Gym and Stanley Gym, as well as a swimming pool, wrestling pit, tennis courts, and several large outdoor playing fields. Activities that had not been possible at the old college such as karate, judo, aikido, and gymnastics became popular recreational activities. The Auxiliary Gym provided students with an archery range and the only Kleiter-Garten wall in Canada, which was used to teach rock climbing. The seminar pits, free-use areas located between floors, were frequently used to promote recreation though wrestling and martial arts demonstrations.

Lincoln Park also had a large craft studio where students could engage in woodworking, ceramics, pottery, metal work, and lapidary arts. Fine arts had been long been a part of the curriculum at the old campus, but Lincoln Park offered state of the art facilities and much-expanded capacity. Best of all, use of the studio was not connected to a specific program so anyone could use the tools and materials.

Students taking advantage of the Craft Studio to paint, weave, and make pottery. T484 - Handbook photos