The Gateway Health Building, the purpose-built teaching and learning facility for the School of Nursing at UBC, has been 100 years in the making.
November 19, 2020
When the School of Nursing opened in 1919, students at the fledgling University of British Columbia crowded into temporary wooden buildings they called “The Fairview Shacks” – now the site of Vancouver General Hospital.
The Great War had stalled the development of the UBC campus but the lack of progress following Armistice led the students to signal their discontent to the BC government, campaigning to have construction continued at Point Grey with a parade we remember as The Great Trek.
The Science Building on the Point Grey campus was completed in 1925 and nursing students moved in with other science students. Above, the original main library is visible on the left.
By 1946, another war had ended and post-war enrolment had increased. Overcrowding forced the nursing students into “The Orchard Huts” or simply “The Huts”—the recently abandoned campus army barracks.
The Huts remained in use as classrooms and then as administration buildings throughout the fifties and sixties. For many years, faculty shuttled between The Huts and classroom space in the Wesbrook Building. Students also resided at the UBC Nursing Students' Residence at Vancouver General Hospital in the 50's and the early 60's.
Finally, the School of Nursing classrooms and administration space came back together to take up residence in the (then) state of-the-art Koerner Pavilion Acute Care Unit, “temporarily” from 1981 to 2025.
Fittingly, in 2019—the centenary of the School of Nursing—UBC approved an innovative space designed specifically for nursing research and education. Our new home, in partnership with the School of Kinesiology, UBC Health, and Integrated Student Health, is located at the NW corner of University Boulevard and Wesbrook Mall as the Gateway Health Building.
