Senate House

Senate House is a term frequently used to describe the main administrative building of a university.

Buildings called Senate House include:

Senate House (University of Cambridge)

The Senate House of the University of Cambridge is now used mainly for degree ceremonies. It was formerly also used for meetings of the Council of the Senate.

Location and construction

The building, which is situated in the centre of the city between King's and Gonville and Caius Colleges, was designed by architect James Gibbs, based to an unclear extent on designs by the gentleman-architect Sir James Burrough, and built in 1722–1730 by Gibbs in a neo-classical style using Portland stone. The ceremony to lay the first stone was performed by Thomas Crosse, then Vice-Chancellor, on June 22, 1722. The site was previously used for houses, which were purchased by an Act of Parliament, dated June 11, 1720. It was officially opened in July 1730, although the western end was not completed until 1768.

The Senate House was originally intended to be one side of a quadrangle, however the rest of the structure was never completed. It forms part of the Old Schools Site. It is a Grade I listed building.

Senate House (University of London)

Coordinates: 51°31′16″N 0°07′43″W / 51.5210°N 0.1287°W / 51.5210; -0.1287

Senate House is the administrative centre of the University of London, situated in the heart of Bloomsbury, London between the School of Oriental and African Studies to the east, with the British Museum to the south. The main building contains the University of London's Central Academic Bodies and activities, including the offices of the Vice-Chancellor of the University, the entire collection of the Senate House Library, and eight of the ten research institutes of the School of Advanced Study (SAS).

The Art Deco building was constructed between 1932 and 1937 as the first phase of a large uncompleted scheme designed for the University by Charles Holden. It consists of 19 floors and is 210 feet (64 m) high. The building's use by the Ministry of Information during the Second World War inspired Graham Greene's novel The Ministry of Fear (1943) and its film adaptation Ministry of Fear by Fritz Lang (1944) set in Bloomsbury, as well as the description of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949): Orwell's wife Eileen worked in Senate House for the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information.