Beaverbrook House
Building Name: Beaverbrook House
Other Names: Starr Residence
Civic Address: 127 Carleton Street, Saint John
Sod Turning: N/A
Cornerstone Laying: [1908?]
Opened for Use: 1908 (as Starr family home); Fall 1953 (as UNB Law School); Fall 1964 (as UNB Saint John)
Official Opening: 15 October 1954 (UNB Law School); September 1964 (UNBSJ); September 1977 (men's residence)
Architect: G. Ernest Fairweather
Named for: The donor of the building, William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Lord Beaverbrook.
Renovations/changes/additions: Remodelled by Lord Beaverbrook prior to donating the building to UNB in 1953.
Notes: Originally built by the Starr family in 1908, the building was used as a family residence until Lord Beaverbrook purchased it in 1951. In 1953 Lord Beaverbrook donated Beaverbrook House as a new home for the UNB Law School, and included a new library as well. This building was used by the Law Faculty until 1959, when it moved to Somerville House in Fredericton. After remaining empty for a few years, in 1964 it became the original campus building of UNB Saint John, housing four classrooms, a lounge, a reading room, and the principal's office. After the move of UNB Saint John to the Tucker Park campus in 1969, the building continued to be used as classroom and meeting space, as well as the home of the Saint John School of Nursing until 1976, when the program was moved to Tucker Park. In 1977 the building was converted to a men's residence for the university in 1977 and was co-ed as of 1980. After 1993, when Beaverbrook House ceased housing students, the building was rumoured to have been considered for destruction to turn into a parking lot. The building is now home to the Urban and Community Studies Institute (UCSI), a multidisciplinary institute which studies small and medium size urban communities in New Brunswick.
Source(s):
- UA Case 123; Section 3, Box 1; Ludlow Hall.
- Leroux, John. Building A University: The Architecture of UNB. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2010, p. 101, 102.
- UA Case 123; Section 3; Box 3; Beaverbrook House.
- UA Case 180; Section 4; File 3.
- UA Case 180; Section 4; File 9.
- UNB Scrapbooks (UA RG 100), September 1954 - February 1955.
© UNB Archives & Special Collections, 2014