Fonds UA-49 - Dalhousie Faculty Club fonds

Dalhousie Faculty Club was incorporated in August 1971 under the Societies Act of Nova Scotia. In 1972 the club took over the main floor of its current premises, a 1922 building designed by Andrew Cobb and built to house the Law School, but used variously by the administration, the library, the English and maths departments, and the computer centre. The club eventually expanded to absorb the building’s Great Hall as well as its basement, which became the Earl of Dalhousie Pub.

While the club did not incorporate until 1971, an accounts ledger for 1932-1959 indicates that an association called the Dalhousie Faculty Union collected membership fees, charged for lockers, magazines, tea services and the use of a squash court, and incurred expenses for catering and office supplies, but there is no indication where its members met. In 1952—one year after the founding of the Dalhousie Faculty Association (DFA)—the name begins to appear in the ledger as the Dalhousie Faculty Club, although the only notable difference in the accounts is the new and regular occurrence of “steward’s services” and "snooker balls and equipment" among the disbursements.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, the DFA socialized and held its meetings on the top floor of the Arts and Administration Building, while a Dalhousie Faculty Club Committee was appointed and charged with establishing a club. A decade later, in 1971, President Hicks offered the committee the former Law Building, along with $20,000 from the Board of Governors in matching funds for the building's renovation as a club house for faculty and senior administrators. The seven members of the Faculty Club Committee formed the club's first Board of Directors to govern the association, which was was a legal entity both separate from the university and independent from the DFA, although founded primarily for its members.

By the late 1970s financial considerations had prompted a change in the club’s by-laws to broaden membership eligibility to include clerical, secretarial, library and technical staff, and in 1984 the club changed its name to the Dalhousie University Club. In 2014 membership access further expanded to include all employees and retirees of Dalhousie and King’s universities, along with graduate students, postdocs, grant-paid employees, professional students and alumni. The club continues to be privately managed under the auspices of its Board of Directors.