Although the University was founded in 1495, the completion of the extension scheme in 1906 coincided with the 400th anniversary of the completion of the original buildings at King’s, thereby providing a focal point for the University’s major quatercentenary celebrations. Four days of festivities took place across the City, which included church services, banquets, torchlight processions, and fireworks displays. In all, the cost of the four days of festivities was the modern equivalent of £1.34 million.
Special Collections holds a wonderful record of these events, largely thanks to the foresight of the then Librarian, PJ Anderson, who compiled a series of scrapbooks to document the celebrations and published a printed record of the events.
100 years on and teaching at Marischal is to cease. The University will now focus on developing the campus at King’s and the Foresterhill complex, as part of a £228 million 10-year programme of investment in its infrastructure, and the buildings at Marischal will become the new home for Aberdeen City Council.
The man charged with designing the new Marischal College scheme was Alexander Marshall Mackenzie, a member of Aberdeen’s most prolific group of architects. The Broad Street frontage was Mackenzie’s undisputed masterpiece, and the building remains the second largest granite building in the world after the Escorial in Madrid.
This plan shows the proposed layout of the ground floor. Most of the accommodation was given over to classrooms and laboratories for the teaching of the sciences and medicine, but there were also rooms devoted to magnetism, electricity, smoking and billiards.
Andrew Carnegie, (1835-1919), steelmaker and philanthropist
This photograph shows the famous industrialist and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, leaving the ceremony having been awarded an honorary doctor of laws. Carnegie was appointed University Rector in 1911, succeeding the Rt Hon Herbert Henry Asquith, MP, which post he held until 1914.
Lord Strathcona’s banquet, Thursday 27th September
Donald Alexander Smith, first Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal (1820 – 1914) was a native of Forres in Moray who emigrated to Canada and amassed a vast fortune with the Hudson’s Bay Company. In later life he turned to politics, eventually holding the post of Canada’s High Commissioner in London. He also became a noted philanthropist and was particularly generous to McGill University in Montreal and Aberdeen University.
All manner of odes, panegyrics and verses were penned and commissioned for the occasion. This poem, by the novelist Thomas Hardy, was published in a commemorative edition of the student publication, Alma Mater, and was modestly described by Hardy as a “very poor contribution”.
The University had conferred on Hardy the honorary degree of LLD in April 1905, his first academic distinction. The Archives also holds the manuscript of 'An Imaginative Woman', a short story from his Wessex Tales series, which was presented by Hardy to the Library in 1911.
Congratulatory Address from the University of Prague
Commemorative Souvenirs
A white china plate with crimson designs is decorated with four roundels containing portraits of the 6th Earl Marischal, the founder of Marischal College; Bishop Elphinstone, the founder of King's College; Alexander Lyon, the Lord Provost of Aberdeen, and The Very Reverend John Marshall Long, the Principal of the University.
A commemorative bronze medal was struck by the Town Council. The Council also presented every schoolchild in Aberdeen with a medal for the princely sum of £238.