Down Memory Lane By Shirley Plakidas
In 1964... There was a 15-minute parking drive-through for cars under the pedestrian bridge on the north side of the Union. Today, the space is a courtyard with umbrella tables.
The Bookstore was squeezed into one space on the ground floor. In 1987, it was expanded to include the second floor, replacing the Reading and Listening Rooms where students could request their favorite vinyl records on one of four turntables, operated by an attendant. There was a large, double-line cafeteria and a snack bar called Tiger Lair. Today, students know Tiger Lair as a food court with brand-name concepts such as Panda Express, Chick-fil-A, CC’s Coffee, Quizno’s, Salsarita’s, and Jamba Juice. A small, 300-seat theater, the Colonnade, located under the large Union Theater, offered almost nightly movies and was the venue for numerous School of Music recitals. Today, the space is a multifunctional reception room for events in the Theater. The Plantation Room restaurant on the third floor was a waiter-service, linen-tablecloth, coat-and-tie restaurant. Today, the Magnolia Room is a more casual dining room with self-service serving islands and a daily all-you-can-eat option. The original Games Area – later named Tiger Pause – offered sixteen lanes of bowling, full-size billiards tables, and a table tennis room. In the 1970s and 1980s, fifty to sixty video games were added in an arcade. Today billiards has its own Tiger Pause room, Photo courtesy LSU Student Union archives and the bowling lanes have been replaced by the Live Oak Lounge, a high-tech lobby with tables that look out over the beautiful Memorial Oak Grove on the south side of the building. The original building had a two-tier outdoor patio on the southeast side of the building near Highland Road. Today, the four-story addition is located in this space, two floors of which are occupied by student organizations. The U.S. Post Office, originally located in the Huey P. Long Fieldhouse, moved into the Union on the ground floor. This fall, the space will be finished out by Ricoh into the new Copy and Mail Center. The breezeway between the main building and Theater was the home of the original Free Speech Alley, where campus politicos gathered weekly to debate the issues of the day. The renovation project enclosed the breezeway, creating additional meeting room space, a lounge adjacent to the Art Gallery, and numerous new dressing rooms for the Theater. Gone but not forgotten are a photo studio, where students had their Gumbo photos made, an ice cream store (Swenson’s), a student-managed Candy Shoppe, a jewelry store, a branch of City National Bank; and a travel agency. Today, the Union still has a barber shop, a branch of Campus Federal Credit Union, six ATMs, two ground-floor eateries – McDonald’s and Einstein Bros. Bagels; a branch of Cox Communications; the campus Tiger Card office; and Kaplan test preparation services. An optical store is planned to open in the fall semester. Photos courtesy Gumbo, 1998
36 LSU Alumni Magazine | Fall 2011