Todd Union was opened in October, 1930 behind Strong Auditorium.  It was named for George W. Todd, who originated the idea of purchasing Oak Hill golf course for use as the UR campus. Deeply interested in a place for students, Todd organized a group of citizens who procured funds to create a student union. 

References
1924 "A Sleepless Night and a Great Vision," Rochester Review 3(2):38-39 (December-January 1924-25)

1930 "Name of Rush Rhees Given to New Library," Rochester Review 8(5):131-132 (June-July 1930)
George W. Todd Union
Nor would it be in the least fitting if the name of George W. Todd were omitted from permanent association with the new campus. For he it was who first envisioned the possibilities of the river site and the Greater University movement, when the need of expanding the college became apparent with the establishment of the School of Medicine and Dentistry. In originally reporting the campaign in this magazine we stated that Mr. Todd had made two contributions to it – one sleepless night and $100,000. As noteworthy as was the latter, the former was probably more significant, for it was during that sleepless night that he first dreamed the dream of a new college on the rolling acres of what was then the Oak Hill site.
With the aid of the late James S. Havens, who became similarly inspired at about the same time, Mr. Todd gradually sold the idea to other civic leaders, including Mr. Eastman, until the Greater University Campaign materialized. And in that great undertaking he served effectively as general chairman of the campaign organization.  Because of this background of associations it has been decreed that the Student Union shall be known as the George W. Todd Union.  It is well that his name is to be perpetuated by that beautiful and uniquely useful building.

1930 The Schiff Photographs of the River Campus | Todd Union | Interior Images |

1931 "The Story Back of Todd Union," Rochester Review 10(2):3-6 (October-November 1931)
A Comfortable Campus Club for Students and Alumni.

1938 "A Small College Union," by Carl Lauterbach, American School and University 10:482-483 (1938)
Includes building floor plans.

1938 "George Todd Dies; Rochester Leader; Industrialist and Business Man Was Founder of the Todd Protectograph Company," The New York Times, March 20, 1938, Page 8.
George W. Todd, founder with his brother Libanus of the Todd Protectograph Company, died tonight at his home here at the age of 78. He had been ill for four years.
The founding of a firm for marketing a protector of bank checks was only one of the many accomplishments of Mr. Todd, industrialist, business man and philanthropist.
Few community enterprises in Rochester lacked the helping hand of Mr. Todd, for his benefactions, both publin and private, were many The University of Rochester long knew him as a patron, and to his vision was credited the movement in 1925 for a greater institution.
Mr. Todd had many years but few birthdays in his life, for he was born on Feb. 29. His parents, Asahel and Sarach McLouth Todd, educated him in the village school at Pultneyville, where he was born in 1860, and in the high school at Williamstown and the Academy at Walworth .
The year 1890 found him at Lansing, Mich., where he entered the manufacturing business. In 1892 he moved to Chicago and four years later came to Rochester, where he associated himself with the Lower Sole Rounder Company and later with the Reed Chemical Company.
In 1899 the Todd Protectograph Company was founded. He was also president of the Stromberg-Carlson Telephone Manufacturing Company and a director of the Eastman Kodak Company, the Lincoln-Alliance Bank and the Rochester Printing Company. He was treasurer and a director of the General Indemnity Company of America.
Mr. Todd's interest in municipal affairs led him to accept a trusteeship in the _Rochester Bureau of Municipal Research and directorships in the Eastman School of Music, the Rochester Community Chest, the Rochester Dental Dispensary and the Highland Hospital.
He was a Republican in politics, and one of his more spectacular accomplishments had a political background. While living in the West in 1884 he had a part in the controversy that attended the founding of the town of Gettysburg, S. D. The result of the dispute was that Mr. Todd and a group of youthful associates transported the Potter County Court House from Forest City to Gettysburg, which since has been the county seat.
He also made large gifts to Cornell University, which his sons attended.
His widow, a sister and three sons, Walter. George and Donald survive.

1938 George Walter Todd (1860-1938) Grave in Riverside Cemetery, Rochester, New York

1973 "Pearson Examines Future of Todd Union," Campus Times, March 1, 1973, Page 1.

1977 History of the University of Rochester, 1850-1962, by Arthur J. May.  Expanded edition with notes
Chapter 22, Oak Hill Becomes River Campus
At about the same time, Rhees confidentially disclosed to George W. Todd the program for a medical center which George Eastman had promised to finance in part. Todd knew Eastman well and indeed had represented him in several important transactions connected with the construction and staffing of the music center. Along with a directorship in the Kodak Company, Todd collaborated with Eastman as a trustee of the Dental Dispensary, on the Bureau of Municipal Research, and at the Chamber of Commerce; during Todd's term as president of the Chamber Eastman agreed to pay for the construction of its present (1968) home. Neither man was college trained; both were self-made individuals, as the saying goes, and cherished much the same basic outlook on life.
Although born near Rochester, Todd spent his youth and early manhood in the Middle West, engaging in a variety of real estate and manufacturing operations. Not long after returning to Rochester, he teamed up with his brother, Libanus, in establishing in 1899 a small shop which turned out reliable protective devices for bank cheques, invented by Libanus. The firm prospered, rapidly acquired an international reputation, and absorbed smaller companies producing office supplies.
A major architect of twentieth century Rochester, Todd was a man to whom the city owed a great deal. It was said correctly that few community undertakings lacked his helping hand and that "once he was interested in an institution his interest in it never flagged." Top place among those institutions in the 1920's was the University of which he became and remained a leading patron.
Todd and Rhees lived on terms of friendly intimacy, and his family occupied the presidential residence when the Rhees' were abroad while a new Todd home was being finished. "I want to tell you about a brainstorm I've got," he is quoted as having said to friends, and proceeded to outline a plan for a splendid collegiate institution on the grounds of the Oak Hill Country Club, overlooking the Genesee. Aided and abetted by an influential Rochester attorney and ex-Congressman, James S. Havens, Todd converted Eastman, who had strongly favored expansion in the Prince Street area, to the Oak Hill idea.
Paying tribute to Todd as a man whom the University "has abiding cause to remember with grateful appreciation," Rhees declared, "It was he who had the vision, at first regarded as chimerical, which was realized for us and for Rochester in the development of our River Campus 'beside the Genesee.' It was he, also, who challenged the imagination of our citizens to embark on the enterprise of raising ten million dollars to make his vision a reality, and who led in that undertaking, giving himself one hundred thousand dollars to realize his dream. It was he who changed Mr. Eastman's frank hostility to enthusiasm for the project and its realization...."
Elated by the trustee verdict, Todd offered to organize a special committee of public-spirited Rochesterians to direct a campaign for funds, which, he recommended, might appropriately be conducted in the autumn of 1922. A committee was in fact created, though the appeal for money was postponed. Todd had a realistic, business-like attitude with regard to raising the money required; it would be a formidable task, he appreciated, to convince Rochesterians that existing facilities for collegiate education were insufficient before the music and medical centers had been firmly established; and it would take some doing to persuade prospective donors that residence halls were indispensable for nourishing college spirit, without which "no institution can become great."
Chapter 27, Undergraduates and Graduates in the Thirties
For the general life of the students, Todd Union quickly proved its worth and invited imitation by similar institutions at colleges across the Republic. Any student might become a member for a fee of ten dollars, and the Union was first managed by a twelve-man board, which in 1936 relinquished its responsibilities to the Board of Control. This body, composed of two alumni, three faculty, the University treasurer, and four (later six) elected undergraduates, largely conducted its affairs through committees: executive or budget, athletic, non-athletic, team and club managers.
Todd Union amenities for lounging, carefree reading, and games became so frequented that as early as 1935 calls went up for expansion of the building. It was the scene of dances and more dances, coffee hours, college (and alumni) dinners, and "fireside chats" with interesting Rochesterians as guests. The bookstore and shops rendered good service and were careful not to compete on price with city firms.
Todd Director Carl W. Lauterbach, 1925, arranged a Boar's Head Procession and Dinner in 1934, which grew into one of the best-loved River Campus traditions. This pre-Christmas party was modeled on an affair at Queens' College, Oxford, where a medieval undergraduate is said to have escaped mutilation by a boar by choking the angry creature with a volume of Aristotle's philosophy; friends of the hero cooked and devoured the animal. At Rochester trumpeters heralded the start of the festival, the Baron of Rochester and his guests took seats at the head table, and professors assumed the boring task of carvers.

2023 Todd Union earns historic designation, March 20, 2023
Recognized as a “key site associated with Rochester’s LGBTQ+ history,” the University of Rochester’s Todd Union has been recommended by New York State’s Board for Historic Preservation to be added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places. Gov. Kathy Hochul recently announced the board’s approval of Todd Union and 12 other sites to be included on the registries. Significantly, inclusion on the State and National Registers of Historic Places makes these properties eligible for various public preservation programs, grants, and services.
Constructed in 1930 on the University’s River Campus, Todd Union is a Georgian Revival style building designed by Rochester architectural firm Gordon & Kaelber. It was originally built to be a campus activity hub and included dining, social, shopping, barber, game, and club facilities for students, which were only men at the time of construction. Todd Union has an early and significant association with the University of Rochester’s Gay Liberation Front (UR GLF), an organization that worked to advance the gay liberation movement on campus and in the city of Rochester in the 1970s. Based out of an office in Todd Union, the UR GLF directly paved the way for numerous Rochester-based LGBTQ+ organizations that continue their work and advocacy more than 50 years later.
Today, the two-and-one-half-story Todd Union retains many of its original features, such as historic staircases, doors, fireplaces, wainscoting, window and door trim, and the post office boxes in the basement.
Inclusion on the State and National Registers of Historic Places involves a lengthy process. Todd Union was nominated by a team of Rochester faculty, staff, and an alumnus and student. Planning and Project Management (PPM) in University Facilities & Services led the effort in partnership with the Landmark Society of Western New York. Contributions to the application came from Col E. Raimond, the director of LGBTQ Life; Gerald Gamm, a professor of political science and of history; and Melissa Mead, the John M. and Barbara Keil University Archivist and Rochester Collections Librarian.
Having been approved by the New York State Historic Preservation Officer, Todd Union will be listed on the New York State Register of Historic Places and reviewed by the National Park Service for inclusion in the National Register. The Park Service makes its decision within 45 days.

© 2021 Morris A. Pierce