The old Y was interesting-looking on the outside, but hopelessly decrepit and inadequate on the inside. Whereas the new Y is dullsville on the outside, but state-of-the-art and awesomely huge on the inside. The Norris building is where I had my first undergrad lecture at Concordia...was also the library during my first 3 years as undergrad; home of the registrar's office, accounts payable, etc. Unbelievably shitty as a university library (consistently ranked as the very worst of any university in Canada)...literally you had to dodge the falling ceiling tiles. Getting out a book sometimes meant requesting days in advance...most of the collection was in the "stacks", and therefore inaccessible to lowly students. The library was at the uppermost floors....and if you thought that the escalators in the Hell builiding were bad, the norris escalators were NNNNNNNNEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRR operational.
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Norris Building
In the 1940s Sir George Williams College overflowed from the Y into nearby rented quarters. The space situation became critical after World War II, particularly when SGW received its university charter in 1948. A new building for SGW opened in 1956 to much celebration; a sixth floor was added in 1959. The $3 million building was clad in nondescript brick, coming flush to the sidewalk to provide the maximum classroom space. In 1964 it was named after Kenneth Norris, Principal of SGW 1936-56, under whom the first university degrees were granted in 1936. Unglamorous but modern and functional, the Norris Building was too small and it lacked specialized facilities essential to the kind of institution SGWU had become. Students spilled out into adjacent rented buildings. Concordia left the Norris Building in 1992 when the library moved to the long-awaited McConnell Building. For eight and a half years the Norris Building was a sad, empty, and deteriorating shell without a trace of the campus life that had filled the halls and sidewalks for nearly half a century. In February 2001 the completely renovated building re-opened as the new Downtown YMCA. The old Y building where SGW College had begun was sold to a developer, and it was demolished in 2002.
http://archives.concordia.ca/norris-building
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