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I found this article in the folder given to me by the
late Lion Dale and thought that it was about time to include some history
of a place our Club frequently calls home. The author of the article and
the date that it was written are both unknown.
Perhaps describing it as an old friend is being too sentimental, but for students who attended the University between 1941 and 1954, the first Falcon’s Nest certainly served as a home away from home. Built on the site of the current University Union, the 47-by-70 foot log cabin was officially opened on Oct 25, 1941, when newly crowned Homecoming Queen Gerry Bircher Barker ’43 cut the ribbon at the front entrance. Built at a cost of $20,000 the building was paid for by a 50-cent increase in student fees. There was also a large dance floor surrounded by booths. Wagon wheels used as chandeliers completed the motif. On the second floor were two rooms which were used as living quarters, meeting rooms and store rooms. Finally, a 10-foot-wide veranda ran the total length of the building’s front facade. The Nest quickly became the hub of student social life. To go with the food, some one was always dropping a coin or two in the jukebox, except on Thursday nights in the early 1950’s, when it seemed like everyone crammed into the building to watch the hit show "Dragnet". Meetings were held around the fireplaces. Votes were cast and counted . Awards were presented during ceremonies. As the years progressed, the building changed: the kitchen expanded and offered a larger variety of foods; the booths were replaced with tables; the fireplaces were no longer used. By the early 1950’s the Nest became impossibly cramped. Student enrollment exploded with servicemen attending school on the GI Bill. Plans to build a new Union – the current building – on the same site were ordered. But that was not the death knell of the log cabin. Rather then demolish it, officials sold the building for $575 to American Legion Post No, 725 in Portage, Ohio. In the fall of 1954 the building was disassembled into three parts, loaded onto trucks and moved through the streets of Bowling Green to its new home three miles south of town. Today the building continues to be used as a meeting hall and is even used periodically by University groups. But the night before it left the campus, as President Emeritus Frank J. Prout would reminisce years later, "all the fraternity men assembled in front of the building. At the stroke of midnight, they serenaded the Nest with Auld Lang Syne." Maybe calling the Nest and old friend is right on the mark.
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