The University of Georgia School of Law Dedication

Dedication exercises held November 17 & 18, 1967. The dedication address was delivered by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black, entitled There is a South of Union and Freedom . The festivities also included the fall Sibley lecture delivered by Robert B. McKay, Dean of the New York University School of Law. The Building In 1859, when law schools were few, the first Chief Justice of the State started, at the seat of University of Georgia, the law school which afterwards bore his name: The Lumpkin Law School. Later, when a building had been designed expressly to house the School and was being dedicated, as Harold Hirsch Hall, on October 29, 1932, one of the dedicatory speakers said it was modern, completely equipped and efficient to the nth degree. In time Hirsch Hall became too small, but it has never lost its charm. It may well be auspicious, now, that the gracious architecture of Harold Hirsch Hall has been preserved, and that this older building blends, without aesthetic or functional hindrance, into the splendid contemporary architecture of the recent addition. The added portion of the seven-times-expanded building, designed by the Atlanta firm of A. Thomas Bradbury and constructed with the H.L. Coble Company of Greensboro, North Carolina, as general contractor, again combines beauty and efficiency. The auditorium, classrooms and offices, comfortably furnished in walnut, well designed for acoustical effects, and the wide corridors and stairwells with glass walls and accenting panels of various colors, are pleasant to eye and ear alike. The completely new library wing, which is the second home of the Alexander Campbell King Library, taking all three floors of the Northern section of the building, and having a soaring glass-walled reading room, is majestic. The building plans provided not only for tile, carpeting, glass, mortar, bricks and the like, but also, eventually, for books. The volume count has already been increased by some 50,000 by purchases from building funds, and these funds continue to provide the means to build the book collection toward the degrees of broadness and depth needed by a law school aspiring to total excellence. Typical of the successful harmonizing of past and present is the new Practice Court Room in the older portion of the building: restored domed and frescoed ceiling, above, rich but unobtrusive walnut surfaces of bench, bar and jury box, below, joined by classic columns, unite to create an atmosphere of dignity; it is a dignity appropriate to the scene of preliminary steps to the practice of an ancient, essential and honorable profession