The First Facilities
In 1908, the newly established University of Alberta was just a small college of Arts and Sciences with four professors and forty-five students. For the next three years the university used temporary facilities in two Edmonton public schools.
This is Athabasca Hall, the University of Alberta’s first permanent building. Completed in 1911, it combined residence facilities for both faculty and students with a library, lecture rooms, and labs. Understandably, Athabasca Hall played a very important role in the life of the first graduating class of 1912.
Additional buildings were soon required to accommodate increasing enrollment. Assiniboia Hall was completed in 1913, and Pembina Hall in 1914. Today, those first buildings are secluded behind the tall trees and luxuriant shrubbery of a well established university. They are of another era, relatively small and quite in contrast to a campus of glass and steel, loud with voices and traffic. Yet in those early years, Athabasca, Assiniboia, and Pembina Halls were the university.