The Phantom Plan: The Hiyoshi Grand Auditorium

2021/06/30

The current Hiyoshi Commemorative Hall

In March 2020, the reconstruction of the Hiyoshi Commemorative Hall on the Hiyoshi Campus was completed. The Hiyoshi Commemorative Hall is a new symbolic presence on the Hiyoshi Campus, a chalk-white building that serves as a venue for ceremonies and as a sports facility. Before that, there was the old Hiyoshi Commemorative Hall, which served a similar function. It was built in 1958 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Keio University's founding and was used for about 60 years.

So, what was there before that?

Looking back at its history, after its return from the GHQ in 1949, the site was temporarily home to tennis and volleyball courts, and before the war (before 1945), it remained an empty lot.

The Hiyoshi Campus was established in 1934, and the prototype of the current campus, including the ginkgo tree-lined avenue, the athletics stadium, the First School Building, the Second School Building, and the Mamushidani tennis courts, was completed around that time. The Sone & Chujo Architectural Office was responsible for this project. They created the master plan, and most of the original buildings were also designed by Sone & Chujo.

The Hiyoshi Commemorative Hall is located directly ahead after passing through the ginkgo tree-lined avenue, a symbolic location at the center of the campus axis, on top of the highest hill. It is strange that nothing was built in such a prominent location, leaving it as an empty lot.

In the warehouse of the Office of Facilities and Property Management, there are blueprints for a "Grand Auditorium" created by the Sone & Chujo Architectural Office, which was planned for that site in 1933. It was a massive building for its time, with one basement floor and four floors above ground, covering 9,158 square meters, 55 meters wide, 72 meters deep, and 35 meters high. The plan was for a large auditorium with a capacity of 3,000 people from the first to the fourth floors, and a smaller auditorium in the basement, making it a two-auditorium facility. The Grand Auditorium is also depicted in a bird's-eye view of the entire campus created at the time of its founding, indicating that the "Grand Auditorium" was part of the original plan.

The current Hiyoshi Commemorative Hall is a sports facility with enough space for three basketball courts that can also be used for ceremonies, serving a dual purpose as a ceremonial hall and a gymnasium. In contrast, this Grand Auditorium was strongly intended as a cultural hall, purely for lectures.

On the Hiyoshi Campus, the development of school buildings took precedence, with the establishment of the Fujiwara Institute of Technology in 1939. Subsequently, partly due to the effects of the wartime situation, the construction of the massive auditorium, which required substantial funding, was put on hold for some time, and it is believed that the site remained an empty lot until the construction of the Hiyoshi Commemorative Hall.

Although it became a phantom plan, if the "Grand Auditorium" had been built at that time, the scenery of the Hiyoshi Campus would have been quite different.

Before the Hiyoshi Commemorative Hall, there was the plan for the phantom "Grand Auditorium."

(Hiroshi Watanabe, Office of Facilities and Property Management)