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, it became the original campus building of UNB Saint John in 1964, 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 a classroom, as a meeting space, and as the home of the Saint John School of Nursing, until the program was moved to Tucker Park in 1976. The building was then 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.