by jollytiddlywink on Sat Mar 13, 2010 11:19 pm
The Criterion is still on South Street, although it had a different name for a while in the interim. There is now only one cinema in town, the NPH on North Street. The University built David Russell Hall a bit further west than the North Haugh, then knocked it down and built David Russell Apartments instead. Several of the smaller halls have either been amalgamated or sold off, and Hamilton is no longer a hall.
The Medics have a new building on the North Haugh which should be opening in September, which leaves only the biologists and the psychologists, and the geoscientists, alone in the town centre amongst all of the arts students. The artists have their own new building, on the Scores and just west of the library, called, fittingly enough, the New Arts Building.
For that matter, I'm not entirely sure whether the library would have been around in 1965. It is not terribly prepossessing; but at least it is more or less hidden from view. Inside is not much to look at either, but it does have books and computers, although man people would be glad to see it have more. The (new) Students Union dates from the same era, of cantilevered overhangs and brutal concrete monoliths, but is fit for purpose inside, with the longest bar in town.
We now have our second Rector in a row who is not a famous comedian, and the Principal is Louise Richardson.
This leaves rather a lot out, of course, but as a five-minute potted history of the last four and a bit decades of the town and the university, I hope it proves to be something more than a dismal failure.