The Institute was founded as a Community Centre in about the year 1934, largely as a result of a bequest to the City Council by the late Mr. Hyman Liberman for the purpose of providing a reading room for the poorer inhabitants of the City. Its premises have always been in District Six and throughout its existence the University has been deeply interested in its welfare. Indeed, according to Mr A. Liberman, one of the Executors, and a nephew of the late Mr. Hyman Liberman, the late Sir Carruthers Beattie, former Principal of the University, was largely instrumental in its creation. He, Sir Carruthers, saw in it a means whereby, in addition to the other laudable purposes which would be achieved by it, the interests of the Department of Social Science at the University could be advanced by the Institute.
It housed a nursery school, a library and reading room and wass the centre of a variety of organizations, clubs and other activities.