The Ohio Union building that opened in March 2010 is actually the university’s third Student Union. The first opened in 1911 on 12th Avenue, but it became too small when enrollment spiked after World War II. So in 1947, students agreed to pay $5 per quarter to have a new union erected. The building, which opened in 1951 on High Street at a cost of $5 million, featured several ballrooms, lounges, and bowling alleys, as well as a cafeteria, commuter’s lunchroom, and the “Tip Top Terrace” dining room, which overlooked Mirror Lake.

By 2007, though, the building had become outdated, so it was closed and razed that year to make way for a new, 318,000-square-foot structure. Students involved in the planning of the new building visited more than 40 student unions across the country to figure out which features should be incorporated into OSU’s version. The new building now includes an instructional kitchen for students, a performance hall, several banquet rooms, and a food court as well as a Sloopy’s Diner and Woody’s Tavern, and a life-size bronze statue of Brutus Buckeye sitting on a bench in the Great Hall. Historical aspects of the old building also have been incorporated: The six panel reliefs highlighting the history of the Ohio River Valley that were featured on the original building’s High Street facade were removed and stored during reconstruction. They now hang, with two additions, on the 11th Avenue side of the union.

In July 2010, the building was the second on campus (after the 4-H building) to become LEED-certified. (LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and means a building has been certified by the U.S. Green Building Council).