Living On Campus An Architectural History Of The

American Dormitory Carla Yanni download

https://ebookbell.com/product/living-on-campus-an-architectural-
history-of-the-american-dormitory-carla-yanni-23281378

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

 Living on Campus

Yanni.indd 1 15/01/2019 10:25:17 PM

This page intentionally left blank
 Living on Campus
An Architectural History of the
American Dormitory

CARLA YANNI

U N I V E R S I T Y O F M I N N E SOTA P R E S S
MINNEAPOLIS • LONDON

Yanni.indd 3 15/01/2019 10:25:18 PM

 The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges the
generous assistance provided for the publication of this book by the
Rutgers University Research Council.

Copyright 2019 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by the University of Minnesota Press

111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-­2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Yanni, Carla, author.
Living on campus : an architectural history of the American dormitory / Carla Yanni.
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018037431 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0455-5 (hc) |
ISBN 978-1-5179-0456-2 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Dormitories—United States—History. | Architecture and
society—United States—History.
Classification: LCC NA6602.D6 Y36 2019 (print) | DDC 720.1/03—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037431

Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free paper

The University of Minnesota is an equal-­opportunity educator and employer.

25 24 23 22 21 20 19        10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Yanni.indd 4 15/01/2019 10:25:18 PM

 To Bill,
who is in charge of funny
To Joseph,
whose laugh lights up our world
To the elder Joseph,
who takes such good care of Mom

Yanni.indd 5 15/01/2019 10:25:18 PM

This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

Introduction  1

1. College Housing for Men

Fellowship and Exclusivity   33

2. The Coed’s Predicament

Women’s Dormitories at Coeducational Colleges   79

3. Quadrangles in the Early Twentieth Century  117

4. Dorms on the Rise

Skyscraper Residence Halls   153

5. Rejecting the High-­Rise

Quadrangles (Redux) and Hill Towns   185

Epilogue
Architectural Inequality and the Future of Residence Halls   219

Acknowledgments  237

Appendix  241

Notes  243

Index  277

Yanni.indd 7 15/01/2019 10:25:18 PM

This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

I n Philip Roth’s Indignation, the atheistic, lovesick, and profoundly unlucky pro-
  tagonist, Marcus Messner, son of a kosher butcher from Newark, New Jersey,
  transfers from an urban university to a prestigious coeducational college in the
boondocks of Pennsylvania. The year is 1951. Marcus’s grades—­all As—­are
beyond reproach. And yet the dean of men, Mr. Hawes Caudwell, hassles him:
“You seem to be having some trouble settling into dormitory life.” The falsely con-
genial Caudwell continues: “I’m a bit concerned about your having already resided
in three different dormitory rooms in just your first weeks here. Tell me in your
own words, what seems to be the trouble?”1 The dean wants Marcus to join the
Jewish fraternity, or at least to consort with other Jews. And Marcus knows it.
“Why should I have to go through this interrogation,” he ponders, “simply because
I’d moved from one dormitory room to another to find the peace of mind I required
to do my schoolwork?”2 Marcus’s question is a reasonable one. But from the dean’s
vantage point, college is not only for schoolwork. The objective of college, and in
particular the goal of dormitory life, is to offer students practice in the fine art of
getting along with their fellows, albeit while staying within socially accepted cate-
gories as determined by college leaders.
Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory explains
why Americans have believed for so long that college students should reside in
purpose-­built structures that we now take for granted: dormitories. This was never
inevitable, nor was it even necessary. In the chapters that follow, I will show
that living on campus is a manifestation of three hundred years of American edu-
cational ideology that placed a high priority on social interaction among stu-
dents. The architecture of dormitories provides a lens through which to examine
the socially constructed nature of the student. Furthermore, the history of this

Yanni.indd 1 15/01/2019 10:25:19 PM

 2 Introduction

building type illustrates that, starting before the American Revolution, student
housing acted to include some and exclude others, causing inequalities that in-
truded on the collegiate ideal. At every step, the architecture of dormitories has par-
ticipated in the establishment of the essential norms of American life. Residence
halls helped universities to reinforce an elite class of men in the new republic,
develop an educated cadre of Victorian wives and mothers, build up middle-­class
values in the Progressive Era, espouse capitalistic individualism in the face of the
Cold War, and negotiate with counterculture students in the 1960s. Dorm living
is one of the most widely shared experiences in modern American life. Hundreds
of thousands of students pass through residence halls, and their lives are changed
by their encounters with these buildings. In spite of that simple fact, the history of
the buildings is not well understood.
Residence halls are not mute containers for the temporary storage of youthful
bodies and emergent minds. Dormitories constitute historical evidence of the
educational ideals of the people who built them. The varied designs of residence
halls reflect changes in student life, as well as college officials’ evolving aspirations
for their institutions, the students themselves, and society at large. The ancient
universities of Europe (Uppsala, Bologna, Utrecht, the Sorbonne, and others)
lasted for centuries without elaborate or purpose-­built housing for their students.3
Community colleges in the United States have not historically provided residence
halls, although some have recently added them. Students at four-­year colleges fre-
quently choose to live in unregulated off-­campus apartments. So why have Ameri-
can educators believed for so long that housing students is essential to educating
them? And, more specifically, what role has architecture played in legitimating that
idea? In this book I explore the experiences of college students by looking closely
at the material cultures and built environments of their dwellings.
Living on Campus is a social history of a building type. This allows me to analyze
how architects and patrons solved similar problems in different contexts. Through-
out the book, I introduce comparative building types where historically relevant.
In the nineteenth century, park designers, urban reformers, prison wardens, and
psychiatrists believed that the environment, including architecture, could trans-
form behavior. By looking at the built environment, we can examine where men
and women were segregated and where they were allowed (or even encouraged) to
be together. In my book on the architecture of nineteenth-­century mental hospi-
tals, The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States, I employ the
concept of environmental determinism to describe how Victorian psychologists
believed they could improve the behavior of patients, and even cure mental ill-
ness, by housing patients in purpose-­built, carefully ordered environments.4 In his

Yanni.indd 2 15/01/2019 10:25:19 PM

 Introduction 3

book Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, Steven Mintz makes a similar
observation about the treatment of children in institutions like orphanages and
reformatories. He notes that although such institutions “stand as relics of a seem-
ingly more repressive, less enlightened past,” they “were inspired, to varying
degrees, by a utopian faith that it was possible to solve social problems and reshape
human character by removing children from corrupting outside influence and
instilling self-­control through moral education, work, rigorous discipline, and an
orderly environment.”5 So, too, college officials argued that it was crucial for stu-
dents to live on campus in order for them to benefit from the self-­improving atmo-
sphere of the purpose-­built college.
This book inhabits an intellectual space between vernacular architectural stud-
ies and traditional architectural history.6 Some of the buildings discussed here
were designed by well-­known architects, but others are ordinary structures. I ana-
lyze communal dwellings over long periods and start with the assumption that the
physical form of the buildings was inextricable from their social context. Dorms
may be found in almost every historical style. From the seventeenth century to
1968, dormitories track architectural fashions. In most cases, one style does not
carry much more meaning than another. We can find dorms in colonial and Geor-
gian styles, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Richardsonian Romanesque, Colonial
Revival, Elizabethan Revival, Arts and Crafts, Dutch Colonial Revival, modernist,
Brutalist, and postmodernist. One could teach the entire history of style in
American architecture by looking only at residence halls. Most campuses are
hodgepodges of historical styles. Exceptions include the University of Colorado
Boulder (Tuscan vernacular) and the University of New Mexico (Pueblo Revival),
both of which had strict design covenants that required architects to build
historicizing structures in one style. Although my primary concern in this book is
not style per se, I do analyze moments when aesthetics generated controversy and
commentary. For example, sources indicate that former presidents of Rutgers
College expressed a deep sense of loss when modernism replaced historicism on
that campus. Some of the case studies represented here were designed by “high
art” architects, but my approach to these buildings is not fundamentally concerned
with their artistry. Instead, I am interested in their social historical meanings,
whether typical or extraordinary.
Although the range of styles was vast, the range of plans was more limited. To
simplify a bit, two plans dominated the construction of residence halls: the double-­
loaded corridor and the staircase or entryway plan. (I will use the terms staircase
and entryway interchangeably.) These were standardized basic layouts referred to
frequently by architects and others; I did not invent the categories. A 1929 book
 4 Introduction

Figure I.1. The entryway (or staircase) plan, based on the residence halls at Oxford and Cambridge
Universities, is one of the most common dormitory types. In this particular version, four student
rooms and small bathrooms are accessible from the landing on each floor. 1 = bedroom; 2 =
bathroom; 3 = staircase (on the ground floor the staircase is aligned with an entryway). Drawing by
John Giganti, based on plans from Charles Z. Klauder and Herbert C. Wise, College Architecture in
America and Its Part in the Development of the Campus (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929).

on college architecture presented the two plans as equally viable.7 At the level of
dormitory planning, the staircase plan utilized several doors that opened directly
to the outdoors, granting students, usually male, the freedom to move in and out
of their buildings at all hours. The permeable staircase plan was widely used for
colleges but was never employed at asylums, orphanages, or jails.
A staircase-­plan dormitory had no central desk or observation point. Upon
entering the building, students circulated up and down the staircase, which was the
center of social groupings. In contrast, a dormitory with a double-­loaded corridor
contained rooms on both sides of a hall, allowing for a single entrance (or two) for
even a very large building. Compared with the staircase plan, this plan made it
easier to track students and visitors. Because surveillance of women was a higher
priority than management of men, architects and deans avoided the staircase plan
for the housing of female students. In 1949, the author of a pamphlet produced by
the American Institute of Architects observed, “It is noted that women’s colleges

Figure I.2. The double-­loaded corridor is a common arrangement for dormitory spaces. A typical
configuration includes student rooms, lounges, and group bathrooms situated on both sides of a
long hall. 1 = bedroom; 2 = bathroom; 3 = corridor. Drawing by John Giganti, based on plans from
Charles Z. Klauder and Herbert C. Wise, College Architecture in America and Its Part in the
Development of the Campus (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929).

Yanni.indd 4 15/01/2019 10:25:20 PM

 Introduction 5

Figure I.3. Three of the

most common dormitory
footprints: 1 = the
rectangular prism or
rectangular block form;
2 = the U, C, or three-­sided
quadrangle; 3 = the fully
enclosed quadrangle or
square donut. These types
can be arranged with
entryways, double-­loaded
corridors, or other internal
divisions. Drawing by
John Giganti.

generally provide more supervision and therefore prefer the corridor-­type plan to
the entry-­type plan.”8 The corridor could be used in a building that took the form
of a rectangular prism, a U shape, or a square donut.
For each chapter, I have chosen case studies that fit within a confined chrono-
logical era, with periods getting shorter as we move toward 1968. I have sought
to include a range of institutions: private, public, large, small, single gender, and
coed. The case studies are keyed to important changes in the management of
student life, such as when two important deans combined forces at the University
of Chicago. In selecting the case studies, I concentrated on moments of contro-
versy in education. If a building is still standing, I considered that a good reason to
choose it over another similar example, but I include some significant buildings
(such as the second Ladies’ Hall at Oberlin) despite their long-­ago demolition.
With the growing professionalization of student deans over time, it became rela-
tively easy to pinpoint buildings that they thought of as models, and therefore I

Yanni.indd 5 15/01/2019 10:25:20 PM

 6 Introduction

could select examples that were admired by deans of women (such as at Howard
University) and by deans of men (as at the University of Wisconsin–­Madison). A
deep cache of archival material (as at the University of Michigan and the Ohio
State University) was an added incentive to investigate a particular building. For
the sake of clarity, each chapter contains at least three discrete case studies, with
comparative material included to deepen the discussion, and the examples pro-
ceed in rough chronological order. There was no way for me to assemble a scien-
tifically perfect selection of cases, and I know that my choices of case studies will
be open to debate. Another scholar who selected different examples would have
written a different book, but I do not think his or her conclusions would be widely
divergent from mine.
Architectural historians will miss some favorite buildings. I chose not to write
about the University of Virginia, because it has been well covered elsewhere.9
Wanting to concentrate on the undergraduate experience, particularly the transi-
tion from childhood to adulthood, I decided not to look at housing for married or
graduate students. I did not, therefore, include Josep Lluís Sert’s or Walter Gropi-
us’s dormitories at Harvard. Louis Kahn’s Erdman at Bryn Mawr is fascinating, but
it is more closely tied to Kahn’s own artistic agenda than to the themes of this
book. Alvar Aalto’s Baker House at MIT, with its memorable parti, is mostly an
interpretation of the single-­loaded corridor, and (as charming as it is) did not yield
much of a legacy.10 An extremely rough estimate places the number of four-­year
colleges in the United States at about three thousand, and if each one has an aver-
age of ten dormitories, there would be thirty thousand possible case studies.11 I
focused on purpose-­built structures, primarily to narrow the scope of my inves­
tigation but also because the archival records for such buildings are particularly
revealing in terms of the makers’ intentions.12
Presidents and other upper-­level college officials made most of the design deci-
sions. Student deans sometimes complained that architects and other adminis­
trators ignored their concerns. To take one example, the National Association of
Women Deans and Counselors sent a questionnaire to its members in 1963. Under
the heading “Extent of Staff Participation in Building Design and Decoration,” one
dean responded, “Deans and resident counselors meet with the architect who
incorporates as few suggestions as possible.”13 At Ohio State in the 1960s, the
university planner intervened on behalf of the dean of students and “his housing
people” because the latter group had “known nothing whatsoever about the fact
that the program was being drawn up.”14 The program in question was the architec-
tural brief for dormitories to house four thousand students—­the largest single
building project ever undertaken by OSU. The upper-­level administrators did

Yanni.indd 6 15/01/2019 10:25:20 PM

 Introduction 7

eventually consult the dean of students. Students did not play a consequential role
in dormitory design until the 1960s.15
Paul V. Turner’s foundational 1984 book Campus: An American Planning Tra­
dition brings to light important innovations in the development of the American
college campus in a holistic sense, rather than as a single building type. In Campus,
Turner is primarily concerned with planning history and the history of colleges as
ensembles of related structures. He cares deeply about the expression of a college’s
values through architectural style. In contrast, my focus is on issues of inclusion,
exclusion, class, and gender. Without Turner’s generous and extensive scholar-
ship, this book would have been much more difficult to write. I also benefited
greatly from the work of Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, in particular her books Alma
Mater and Campus Life.16 The latter offers a rich longitudinal study, which must be
the starting point for anyone interested in the social history of students. Alma
Mater expanded methodological horizons for many historians by combining social
history and the history of place, but even that pathbreaking book contains few
illustrations of plans.

WHY LIVE IN A DORMITORY? SOCIABILITY AND NETWORKING

Colonial-­and Federal-­era colleges, especially those in rural locations, were obli-

gated to build housing for their students, because there were not enough board­
inghouses or other dwellings nearby.17 Educators wanted some distance between
their students and the vice-­filled city. Every outpost, no matter how small and
isolated, fancied itself a New Athens, and town boosters optimistically assumed
that an institution of higher learning was required.18 Furthermore, many early col-
leges were missionary in spirit, and thus needed to be close to potential converts.19
Each denomination had one or more of its own colleges, and, as one contem­-
porary observer noted, America seemed to have an “excessive multiplication” of
colleges of “dwarfish dimensions.”20 These numerous and small colleges differed
fundamentally from European academies of higher learning. The small residential
college, as developed in the United States, had no exact parallel in the Old World.
Furthermore—­and this is an essential argument for this book—­the fixation on
college as a means of didactic character forming was embedded in America’s reli-
gious landscape: without a state religion, each denomination used institutions
of higher learning to imprint its specific morality upon its followers. This moral
guidance was easier to transmit if the students lived on campus with the faculty. As
Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the fictitious Harley College, modeled on Bow-
doin College in Maine, in his novel Fanshawe: “The local situation of the college,

Yanni.indd 7 15/01/2019 10:25:20 PM

 8 Introduction

so far secluded from the sight and sound of the busy world, is peculiarly favorable
to the moral, if not to the literary, habits of its students; and this advantage proba-
bly caused the founders to overlook the inconveniences that were inseparably con-
nected with it.”21
As I discuss in chapter 1, colleges were often housed in single, multipurpose
structures that encompassed all the functions of a school, including the presi-
dent’s home, faculty apartments, student bedrooms, chapel, library, dining hall,
and classrooms. There was not much opportunity for privacy, but then privacy
was in short supply in houses of the period, too. Several of the college rooms, the
chapel and dining hall in particular, supported assembly. Harvard’s first governing
board reported: “It is well known . . . what advantage to Learning accrues by the
multitude of persons cohabiting for scholasticall communion, whereby to acuate
the minds of one another, and other waies to promote the ends of a Colledge-­
Society.”22 Although the actual curriculum was limited, Christian morality was
nonetheless a large part of what boys were supposed to absorb at the colonial col-
lege. This character formation was not gleaned from book study so much as from
the observation of role models. As early as 1671, American college leaders were
proposing that students and faculty living together in a communal setting was an
“advantage to learning.” Sharing living space with their professors was good for
students’ moral development. This attitude was an essential intellectual and emo-
tional precondition for the American dormitory.
Benjamin Franklin, who is counted among the founders of what later became
the University of Pennsylvania, saw the enhancement of social ties as a reason for
going to college: “Persons of Leisure and Public spirit” will “zealously unite, and
make all the Interest that can be made to establish [themselves], whether in Busi-
ness, Offices, Marriages or any other thing for their advantage.”23 Franklin had a
particularly pragmatic view of higher education. He recognized that many boys
did not go to college solely for book learning or credentials—­they also went to
meet other people of their social class, who, with a little luck, had younger sisters.
Although Franklin wished for a more egalitarian society than the one that gave rise
to Oxford and Cambridge, he also recognized that the members of the ruling
classes in the colonies had to interact and socialize. Franklin’s interest in match-
making as a by-­product of collegiate life can be traced forward in time to an inter-
view question that fraternity members used at Williams College in 1836 to help
them select new brothers: “Would you allow your sister to marry him?”24
Who was included in, and who was excluded from, dormitory life? Enforced
diversity—­the ostensible raison d’être of modern-­day residence halls—­never
entered the minds of early American college officials. In fact, antidiversity was the

Yanni.indd 8 15/01/2019 10:25:20 PM

 Introduction 9

norm. Today residence halls are drenched in the self-­congratulatory rhetoric of

diversity, but the building type emerged in the service of exclusion. College life
introduced men to other men like themselves. Using funds from England, Harvard
built its Indian College so that whites would not have to dwell with Native Ameri-
cans. While it might look like these early dormitories were nothing more than
boxes for warehousing young men, they were in fact a public celebration of the
importance of colleges in the colonies and nascent republic, a topic explored in the
first part of chapter 1.
Chapter 1 also considers white male fraternities and the houses they lived in.
Fraternities amplified the cultures of privilege and sexism that loomed over college
life. From their earliest days, Greek organizations dominated social life on campus,
and college administrators were aware of this imbalance. Non-­Greek-­affiliated stu-
dents were often left without access to membership on sports teams, friendships,

Figure I.4. Old West, Dickinson College, 1803–­5, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect, interior of
student room, date of photograph unknown. Although the students were obviously posing, the
photograph shows a typical men’s room, with books, a tennis racket, a desk, dresser, and bed.
Archives and Special Collections, Dickinson College.

Yanni.indd 9 15/01/2019 10:25:20 PM

 10 Introduction

and leadership positions. At the University of Michigan and Cornell University,

just two of many examples from the late Victorian era, poor students lived in
run-­down boardinghouses while wealthy students lived in grand fraternity houses.
The thousands of fraternity houses that currently dot the American landscape
are a building type unto themselves, significant enough to warrant a book-­length
study of their own (by a different author, I hasten to add). Nonetheless, in my
archival research I found that the histories of the dormitory and the fraternity are
so entwined that I decided to include a few Greek houses here for comparison
purposes.25 Historian Nicholas Syrett has explored the lives of students in white
fraternities, concluding that such fraternities have served to define class-based con-
structions of masculinity.26 He also points out that when women began to attend
college with men, fraternity brothers rejected these women students as potential
mates. Many social and cultural historians are attuned to difference and discrimi-
nation in texts; in this book I provide a model for analyzing how physical struc-
tures have reinscribed the segregation of races, social classes, and genders.
The housing of women on coeducational campuses is the main subject of
chapter 2. Women’s residence halls were generous in their public spaces and well
appointed in terms of furniture; these structures sought to keep women protected
and confined, but they certainly did not resemble prisons. While every college
claimed that female students were housed in homelike structures, everyone recog-
nized this as a kind of fiction: a building with a hundred women under one roof
was not a home. Nonetheless, the appearance of domesticity on the interior, espe-
cially in the common rooms, was essential. This was in accord with an educational
philosophy that promoted the idea that young women were being trained for
future lives as wives and mothers. Women’s dormitories on coed campuses reveal
the paradox of female students who braved the male-­dominant atmosphere: dor-
mitories announced their presence, but elaborate halls suggested they needed pro-
tection. Domesticity was a double-­edged knife.
Where did college students live during the height of the future-­loving Jazz
Age? Chapter 3 shows that they lived in medieval revival quadrangles. The quad
was the preferred architectural form during the 1920s and 1930s because it inspired
memories of Oxbridge, created a private exterior courtyard, and offered a “tradi-
tional atmosphere of academic quiet.”27 The University of Wisconsin built two
quadrangles that were considered models for other universities.28 At Howard Uni-
versity, a premier African American university, an influential dean of women, Lucy
Diggs Slowe, worked closely with architect Albert Cassell. In 1933 the Howard
yearbook, The Bison, brimmed with pride at the successful completion of new
women’s dormitories: “Out of a sea of green, they rise in grandeur.”29

Yanni.indd 10 15/01/2019 10:25:21 PM

 Introduction 11

Figure I.5. Women students at the University of Chicago, 1899. This is one of many evocative
photographs in a remarkable album that documents the life of an undergraduate at the University of
Chicago, Hedwig Loeb; her sister, Hannah; and their friends. Here the young women, wearing
tartan skirts, are gathered on the lawn outside Green Hall for a game they called “golf ballet.”
Hedwig Loeb’s photo album, 1899–­1900, Hedwig L. Loeb Papers, Special Collections Research
Center, University of Chicago Library.

Low-­rise buildings were the status quo in student housing until the 1940s,
but, as discussed in chapter 4, just after World War II skyscraper residence halls
burst into the clouds at many universities. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act
(better known as the GI Bill), which included education benefits, went into effect
shortly after the war; in 1946, approximately one million veterans enrolled in U.S.
colleges and universities, almost doubling the size of the student population.30
Colleges were swamped by the massive influx of people; thousands of students
dwelled in temporary and retrofitted structures. The GI Bill was the most sweep-
ing educational legislation enacted by the federal government since the 1860s, and
it catalyzed a building boom during which residence halls exploded in number and

Yanni.indd 11 15/01/2019 10:25:21 PM

 12 Introduction

Figure I.6. Women’s Dormitory, Howard University, 1929–­31, Albert Cassell, architect,
photograph from 1951. Students walk through the original west gate of the quadrangle; one range
of the building is visible behind them. Two more wings were built later in accordance with Cassell’s
plans. Today the complex is known as the Harriet Tubman Quadrangle. Scurlock Studio Records,
Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

in size. Most state schools, and many private ones, created superblocks made up of
these looming devices for storing students. At Rutgers University, which had only
recently become the state university of New Jersey, three long, thin, nine-­story
slabs, housing a total of one thousand men, rose alongside the Raritan River in
1955; every floor had a lounge, and half of the student rooms enjoyed river views.
Long hallways were lined with cookie-­cutter double bedrooms. The buildings
shared the Student Activities Center, which boasted floor-­to-­ceiling windows and
a roof garden. The designers of modernist skyscrapers at many public universities
knowingly rejected the application of historical styles, which smacked of privilege
in those optimistic postwar days, when state funding for education was increasing
and when most Americans thought of education as a public good.31
The Ohio State University built two octagonal towers (begun in 1962) that
soared over every other building on the campus. The towers offered nice views
from every room and preserved the ground area for playing fields—­with 100 per-
cent confidence in air-­conditioning and fast elevators, why build low? Local poli-
tics obligated state universities to hire regional architects, and thus these high-­rise

Yanni.indd 12 15/01/2019 10:25:21 PM

 Introduction 13

Figure I.7. Women’s Dormitory, Howard University, 1929–­31, Albert Cassell, architect, interior
of a double room, photograph from 1951. Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National
Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

dormitories tended not to receive much notice in the national architectural press.
State universities had taxpayers to serve and used public funds sparingly, which
was one reason, along with architectural taste, that modernism edged out histori-
cism on state campuses. In 1957, a group of deans sympathetic to modernism
reported: “College architects have shown commendable ingenuity in the adapta-
tion of modern architectural styles to the functions of residence halls, and the col-
leges well equipped with Colonial, or Gothic halls built from 10 to 50 years ago
now listen to criticism alike from envious undergraduates and from experts in
neighboring colleges who built more efficient and convenient housing of glass and
steel and concrete.”32
But towers and slabs did not hold sway for long. Architects, educators, and stu-
dents soon grew weary of rigid modernist urban planning and found precedents in

Yanni.indd 13 15/01/2019 10:25:21 PM

 Figure I.8. River Dorms, Rutgers University, 1955, Kelly and Gruzen, architects. The postwar
period saw a sharp increase in the number of high-­rise dormitories. At Rutgers, two men look out at
the Raritan River from the balcony of the lounge on one of the upper floors of the River Dorms.
This photograph was taken on move-­in day. Buildings and grounds, box 9, Special Collections and
University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries.

Yanni.indd 14 15/01/2019 10:25:22 PM

 Figure I.9. Morrill Tower, Ohio State University, 1963–­67, Schooley, Cornelius, and Schooley,
architects. The Ohio State University built high-­rise dormitories despite the large amount of land
available near the campus. Drawer 67, folder “Lincoln and Morrill Towers (2),” Photo Archives,
The Ohio State University Archives.

Yanni.indd 15 15/01/2019 10:25:22 PM

 16 Introduction

much-­beloved vernacular villages, which seemed to encourage casual interaction.

Eero Saarinen at Yale composed a plan for two colleges that recalled the hill towns
of Italy in its irregular steps, crooked street pattern, and variation of building
heights. A more obvious way to reject the rigidity of the high-­rise was to return to
the comfort of the quadrangle. The first buildings at the University of California,
Santa Cruz, were quadrangles such as Cowell College, which inspired Livingston
College, a part of Rutgers. UC Santa Cruz was a brand-­new university in 1965,
yet its residential colleges harked back to the Middle Ages. Students would dwell,
dine, and study together; a handful of faculty members would live on-­site. Among
students, hatred of the modernist superblock dovetailed with the upsurge of their
own power within the world of higher education.33
Approved in 1968, Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz
(Charles Moore and William Turnbull, of the firm MLTW), was designed as a
colorful, highly ornamented, village-­like setting—­an anti-­institutional residential
college nestled among redwood trees. When professors, staff members, and stu-
dents established Kresge College, they conducted a class that was managed as a
loosely run group therapy session. The members of this therapy group promoted
an ideal social realm in which “straight talk” and “being authentic” would prevail.
Kresge apartments opened directly onto the street. Students participated actively
in the design process, and, along with administrators and instructors, shunned
time-­honored dormitory spaces: there were no group bathrooms, no cafeteria, and
almost no corridors. The residences at Kresge College turned all previous attempts
at housing students upside down and inside out; the college offers a logical con-
cluding point and serves as the last case study in this book.

THE DORMITORY’S RELATIONSHIP TO

OTHER COMMUNAL HOUSING TYPES

Medieval monasteries served as the architectural precursor to the quadrangles of

Oxford and Cambridge, and hence they are the distant precedents for many Amer-
ican colleges.34 Monasteries were places of study, learning, and the production of
knowledge. In physical form, a monastery often included a rectangular outdoor
space that was walled off from the neighboring town or countryside. In some
monastic orders, brothers lived apart from the world, in sturdy, well-­built struc-
tures that included dining rooms, individual cells for sleeping, and outdoor square
courtyards or cloisters. Monastic churches were the precedents for the chapels at
Oxbridge colleges. Convents shared many of the same characteristics. Of course,
this similarity to colleges cut two ways: some viewed the monastery as a heralded

Yanni.indd 16 15/01/2019 10:25:22 PM

 Introduction 17

Figure I.10. Kresge College, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1967–­73, MLTW, architects.
The architecture is evocative of a village with a narrow street, thus rejecting both the quadrangle
and the skyscraper models. Photograph by author.

and worthy predecessor, while for others it was a tainted and superstitious rem-
nant of the Catholic past.
From the seventeenth century forward, Oxford and Cambridge dominated
ideas about the proper architectural form for American colleges. Housing almost
all of their students, they were oddly the exception, not the rule, among the oldest
universities. The buildings at Oxford and Cambridge were designed in a variety
of styles, but they were usually three or four stories tall and took the form of a
series of connected square donuts. These quadrangles used the entryway plan as a
means of getting boys to their rooms, which were located off of staircases. When
women’s dormitories began to be added in the Victorian era, they employed long
corridors rather than staircases.35 (The term quadrangle can also be used to refer
to a series of buildings around a rectangular lawn, but in this book I use it to refer
to the square donut plan.) Historian of education Alex Duke notes that college

Yanni.indd 17 15/01/2019 10:25:23 PM

 18 Introduction

leaders were especially enamored of the English idea that faculty members should
live with students to create an atmosphere of around-­the-­clock scholarly debate.36
Taking these precedents from across the pond as mere examples to be improved
upon, Americans creatively reinvented the British system to suit their own needs.
The residential colleges at Yale and Harvard, built around 1930, were more lux­
urious than their English forebears.
Dormitories are related to the residential housing found in several other types
of reforming institutions, many of which, in spite of possible good intentions, have
inauspicious legacies. For American historians, David Rothman’s The Discovery
of the Asylum, first published in 1971, broke new ground; inspired by the writings
of Michel Foucault, Rothman presents prisons, workhouses, and mental asylums
as an axis of antebellum evil.37 The depersonalization, repetitive daily regimens,
and insistently orderly architecture of these institutions caused the erasure of self
in the face of oppression in the early years of the American republic. The features
that colleges shared with such institutions included forced interaction among
strangers, harsh rules, and strict punishments, as well as regimented schedules for

Figure I.11. Old Court, Clare College, Cambridge University, 1638–­1715. Clare College is a
traditional quadrangle: an interior square courtyard (open to the sky) enclosed by four low-­rise
structures, creating a square donut. This form was the basis for many collegiate dwellings.
Photograph by Ayla Lepine.

Yanni.indd 18 15/01/2019 10:25:23 PM

 Introduction 19

eating and praying. (Harvard professors disciplined students by beating them with
birch branches until 1734, and then shifted to ear boxing; it was not until 1788 that
Harvard began to use fines rather than corporal punishment to control student
behavior.)38 American colleges were not built for the purpose of punishment, or
even for the strict separation of students from society, but what if upper-­class
people used those same devices of social control, enacted in a purpose-­built struc-
ture, in the service of replication of their own elite status? What might that look
like? It might look like a bit like a colonial-­or Federal-­era dormitory.
Asylums were sites that publicly celebrated the medical therapy then known
as “moral treatment.” Dormitories were a logical extension of asylums, and not just
because of the drollery that ensues from comparisons of college students to mad-
men. These two building types are examples of communal housing; both forced
architects to consider issues of fireproofing, ventilation, categorization of resi-
dents, separation of genders, and surveillance. In both cases, institutional leaders
used architecture to construct cultural norms and to encourage socially acceptable
forms of interaction. If the critical fortunes of the asylum led to constantly decreas-
ing relevance, the residence hall’s trajectory was toward greater importance; the
asylum’s negative associations meant that the hulking structures were eventually
abandoned, while many dormitories (even old ones) are still in use.

Space and Childhood

In discussing the spaces of childhood, architectural historian Marta Gutman has
explained, “Adults used physical spaces and changing material culture to set out
and put in place their goals for childhood.”39 For historians interested in the daily
lives of small children, who tend not to leave behind a treasure trove of diaries, the
study of material culture enables glimpses into these lives that are unavailable any
other way. Obviously, the same is not true of college students, who live among and
produce texts. Even so, the physical spaces of supposedly normative late adoles-
cence are oddly understudied; at this point, we know more about asylums and
orphanages than we do about dormitories.
As Gutman notes, “Physical space is not a backdrop for childhood, but rather
the two—­space and childhood—­are mutually constitutive.”40 The space of college
dormitories can be set within this framework. However forcefully professors,
deans, and architects have tried to impose corrective behavior on their charges, the
students have always pushed back. Students find creative ways to undermine
fuddy-­duddy deans and prying professors. The grand dome of the main build-
ing at MIT was not envisioned as a pedestal for a realistic full-­scale model of a
fire truck, nor was the observatory at Carleton College imagined as R2-­D2, but

Yanni.indd 19 15/01/2019 10:25:23 PM

 20 Introduction

students made both of these come true. Benjamin Latrobe did not expect the stor-
age rooms in the basement of Dickinson College’s Old West to serve as a dance
hall, where boys danced with each other in the middle of the night to fiddle music.41
Beds and desks are frequently duct-­taped to dorm ceilings. Occasionally room-
mates meet the same fate. Dormitories have been witness to sex, and lots of it:
awakenings and setbacks, experiments and failures, pleasures and perils, assigna-
tions and assaults. This is all to say that college students place demands on build-
ings that no architect or administrator could possibly predict. The inhabitants
of dormitories make their own meanings; these kinds of minor mutinies can be
hard to document in the early period, but diaries, journals, and newspapers let
us know that students have always transformed the dormitory’s orderly spaces of
control into other realms.

Hotels and Apartment Houses

Not all communal antebellum dwellings were part of coercive institutions where
inmates were confined against their will. Although the nineteenth-­century hotel
demonstrated some of the same physical forms as the dormitory, including double-­
loaded corridors, bedrooms, dining rooms, parlors, and behind-­the-­scenes kitch-
ens, the hotel was also different from the dormitory in many ways. The hotel,
which served a mobile and ever-­changing clientele, was a commercial space where
liquor and entertainment (not to mention the services of sex workers) were on
offer. The hotel was far more public than the college dormitory and served politi-
cal uses.42 The hotel was of the city; the dormitory was not. In her study of the first
apartment buildings in New York City, Elizabeth Cromley locates a battle over
privacy and efficient use of space in the crowded city. The row house needed so
much space for circulation that it made the tasks of daily life difficult, especially for
servants.43 Middle-­class New Yorkers did not want to live in tenements, either, and
a whole generation of city dwellers needed to be convinced that living in French
flats was socially acceptable. Richard Morris Hunt, among others, promoted apart-
ment buildings as suitable homes rather than just pileups of houses under one
roof. But other than having many people under one roof, the apartment house did
not resemble the dormitory, because a dormitory did not have separate familial
units and thus did not need to be subdivided into sections, each with its own
kitchen, parlor, dining room, bathroom, and servants’ quarters. Similarly, the plan
of a tenement bore little resemblance to that of a dormitory. Many of today’s resi-
dence halls lean heavily in the direction of apartment blocks. At many universities,
on-­campus apartments for juniors and seniors are managed by the department of

Yanni.indd 20 15/01/2019 10:25:23 PM

 Introduction 21

student affairs; with trained university personnel on-­site, this arrangement assures
students’ families of greater security, and yet each small group of students can live
in a setting with its own kitchen.

Boardinghouses
Not all students lived in dormitories in the early years of American colleges. From
the time colleges came into existence in the colonies, some students lived in board-
inghouses (see chapter 1). These were not an architectural type: they were ordi-
nary homes, usually walking distance from campus, in which students rented
rooms. In some cases, the landladies provided meals (board) for a price. It was
difficult to supervise students in this type of lodging, but that did not stop deans
from trying. Deans of women, in particular, kept a sharp eye out for potential prob-
lems in boardinghouses. They regularly inspected the homes to make sure that the
only occupants were female and that the buildings were safe from fire, outfitted
with iron bedsteads, and had parlors on the first floor, so that the women would
not be tempted to entertain men in their bedrooms. In 1926, when the profes-
sional society of deans of women convened for a meeting, student housing was a
topic of detailed discussion. One dean tackled the unenviable task of diagnosing
an outbreak of skin disease, which required her to drive around Greeley, Colorado,
visiting all the boardinghouses to make sure her charges were not sharing beds.44
Other, less itchy problems were also associated with boardinghouses, such as price
gouging, lack of trained adult supervision, poor heating, and unhealthful food; in
addition, deans worried about the loneliness of the student residents and the time
they wasted walking long distances to campus.

Corridors
The image of the long hallway is persistent, and corridors themselves are worthy
of study. Architectural historian Mark Jarzombek has written thoughtfully about
corridors—­especially about their downstream history, as they descended from
celebratory vaulted spaces of palaces to the repetitive and banal interiors of mod-
ernist institutions: “Modern materials, abstract detailing, and the low ceilings of
the post–­World War II corridors put an end to the idea of corridic grandeur.
Stripped of its vaults, frescoes, paintings, statues, and marble floors, the corridor,
despite various claims still in its favor, slowly became a flash-­point—­one of many,
of course—­of what was wrong with modernism.”45 This sentiment can certainly
be found among collegiate officials in the 1960s, who sought relief from monoto-
nous hallways in dormitories.46 We can find elegant and elaborate corridors in

Yanni.indd 21 15/01/2019 10:25:23 PM

 22 Introduction

some dormitories (like the University of Michigan’s Martha Cook Building, dis-
cussed in chapter 2) and gloomy concrete corridors in others (as in the River
Dorms at Rutgers, addressed in chapter 4).
The endless, echoing corridor plays a central role in a story I heard many
times as I pursued this research. The first version is “I lived in a dorm that was just
like a prison.” And the second is the dramatic (but unlikely) “I lived in a dormitory
that was designed by a prison architect!” Like many historical myths, these two
stories reveal underlying truths. Certainly, a lot of dormitories have unnerving
corridors. Prison cell blocks, however, actually employ a different sort of corridor,
in which the cells are stacked and each level opens onto a walkway, creating a long,
thin space that is several stories tall. Another explanation for students’ perceptions
of the dormitory as prison might lie in the increase in the numbers of students
after World War II. Many universities responded by putting up housing blocks
quickly in the period after the war, and these blocks’ inexpensive construction,
lack of ornament, and repeated identical buildings call to mind penal architecture.
Additionally, when the baby boomers began to attend college, the style known as
Brutalism was in vogue, and architects used a preponderance of masonry block
and concrete as exterior materials for dormitories. In reality, comparisons between
dorms and jails are mostly fodder for miserable undergraduates who feel subju-
gated by everything, including architecture. This is not to say that their complaints
are unreasonable; it is only to say that while their dorms may be uncomfortable,
they are not truly equivalent to prisons.
Brutalist buildings, especially those with slit windows, have engendered another
myth among students, namely, that college officials use such architecture to pre-
vent student uprisings. This is almost always wrong, as the buildings typically pre-
date whatever student protests are at issue, but it is such a widely disseminated
myth that the fact-­checking website Snopes.com lists it among urban legends in
need of debunking.

COLLEGE STUDENTS: WHO WERE THEY?

The diversity of college students makes it impossible to characterize them in a few

lines, and the long period discussed in this book, stretching from the eighteenth
century to 1968, makes such a summary even more difficult. Childhood (or ado-
lescence, or young adulthood) has never been a fixed state, but rather has always
been under construction and reconstitution, subject to norms based on class, race,
and gender. There are, however, some reliable historical developments that can be
noted. One overall trend from the colonial period forward was toward increasing

Yanni.indd 22 15/01/2019 10:25:23 PM

 Introduction 23

autonomy for youth and a related loss of control by teachers, parents, and other
supervisors. Another trend: students got older. In the earlier period covered here,
students were commonly as young as fourteen. Today, college students are usually
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-­two, and many are in their middle twen-
ties.47 Twenty-­first-­century students are also diverse in terms of race, and more
women than men graduate with bachelor’s degrees.48
We tend to think of Harvard as one continuously operating institution, and in
some respects it is, but when it was founded in 1636—­the first college in the
English-­speaking colonies—­the students were nothing like present-­day collegians.
In the seventeenth century, adults viewed children as weak and prone to sin; they
required guidelines and reprimands.49 During the colonial period, a boy’s relation-
ship to his family was usually at least partly an economic one, in that the labor
performed by children was essential for survival; sending an able-­bodied boy to
college was both a cost and a loss to the family.50 During the period before the
Revolutionary War, one Native American, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, graduated
from Harvard; there were no black students.51
In the later eighteenth century, middle-­and upper-­class adults began to cherish
children for their emotional and sentimental ties to the family. Families that could
manage it arranged for their children to mature gradually, in calibrated steps,
within institutions segregated from adult society. As adults began to see children
as deserving of a happy beginning to their lives, guardians began approaching
their charges with thoughtful incremental conditioning.52 During this period fer-
tility rates declined among the upper classes, and the intensity of family affection
increased as adults centered their lives on the nuclear family.53
From 1870 to 1915, the numbers of female college students grew steadily.
According to a report published by the National Center for Education Statistics:

The proportion of women earning bachelor’s degrees rose slowly during the lat-
ter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Between 1869–­70 and
1909–­10, the proportion of bachelor’s degrees earned by women rose from 15
percent to 23 percent. During the teens and the twenties, the proportion received
by women grew more rapidly, reaching 40 percent in 1929–­30. The proportion
remained about the same during the 1930s, but rose dramatically during the early
1940s as large numbers of men left home to fight in World War II.54

Another estimate places even more women in college: in 1870, 21 percent of

U.S. college students were women, but by 1920, the proportion had risen to 47
percent.55

Yanni.indd 23 15/01/2019 10:25:23 PM

 24 Introduction

This increase in the number of women attending college does not mean that all
of them were then embarking on careers. In 1895, Charles F. Thwing, president
of the university that later became Case Western, heralded the role of educated
women as wives, mothers, and homemakers:

The fact is that about fifty-­five per cent of the woman-­graduates of our colleges
marry. The fact is a happy one—­happy for the wives and the husbands, and
happy also for the homes. . . . The fact that most women prefer to marry is also a
happy one for life itself. The home is the center of life; it is the source of life’s best
influences. No contribution for its enrichment is too costly. All that learning and
culture can offer, all that the virtues can achieve, all that the graces can contribute,
all that which the college represents and embodies, is none too rich for the better-
ment of the home. The college woman, therefore, as embodying the best type of
womanhood, is bringing the best offering of herself to the worthiest shrine.56

Although it may seem counterintuitive, the dormitory itself was a training ground
for future domestic hospitality. Some colleges operated so that the social spaces
in the women’s dormitories welcomed male students, too. As discussed in chap-
ter 2, parties hosted by female students in genteel parlors were supposed to civilize
brutish young men.
As historian John Thelin notes, between 1890 and 1910, “college enrollments
represented less than 5 percent of the American population of eighteen-­to twenty-­
two-­year-­olds.”57 Within this narrow band of American society there was a hierar-
chy: “Even though going to college conferred elite status on an individual, not
every undergraduate enjoyed first-­class citizenship in the campus community.”58
Given that first-­class citizenship entailed belonging to a fraternity, deans in the
early twentieth century sought to level the playing field by building dorms, so that
those students who did not gain acceptance to fraternities or who chose not to
join would at least be able to live on campus. A deep gulf separated the outsiders
(mocked with names like “grinds,” “barbs,” and “fish”) from the fraternity men,
who were self-­styled as happy-­go-­lucky, clubby, and physically fit. (To quote
Homer Simpson: “Marge, try to understand, there are two kinds of college stu-
dents, jocks and nerds!”) For the wealthy, college was a chance to make connec-
tions. For middle-­class students and those who were the children of immigrants,
college was a more serious affair: it was the only way to leave manual labor behind,
the only route to a profession.59
Around 1900, the adolescent—­that sexual, angst-­ridden, and impetuous being—­
erupted onto the collegiate scene. It was during the first decade of the twentieth

Yanni.indd 24 15/01/2019 10:25:23 PM

 Introduction 25

century that psychiatrists began to see adolescence as a natural developmental

stage between the onset of puberty and full adult maturation. Doctors described
it as a turbulent time, but predictably so. Although G. Stanley Hall did not coin
the term, he was the first to use it as a category in psychological analysis. While
channeling widespread cultural influences on the emotional struggles and genera-
tional conflicts of adolescents, Hall was also responding to late nineteenth-­century
fears of emasculation and degeneration.60 Indeed, boys, not girls, were central to
his vision.61 College was still seen as a way station between childhood and adult-
hood, and now there was a new name for the psychological condition of that in-­
between time. Hall believed adolescence should be prolonged. Young men needed
activities that would enhance their vigor and “primitive strength” in addition to
traditional study, which had the unfortunate side effect of causing weakness or
even neurasthenia.62 Youths should “be protected from premature adulthood,” and
“adolescents needed to be separated from the world of adults, except for those who
would guide and nurture them.”63
Young men, more so than young women, saw college as a kind of glorified play-
ground.64 They attended football games wearing bowler hats, wingtip shoes, and
full-­length raccoon coats. The fad was such a sensation that the band George Olsen
and His Music recorded a dance tune called “Doin’ the Raccoon,” which celebrated
(and teased) the “college men, knowledge men” who blindly followed convention.
Crooners sang: “Rough guys, tough guys, men of dignity / Join the raccoon coat
fraternity!” As the lyrics made clear, the collegiate man was a figure of fun in pop­
ular culture, not a serious political force as he would be decades later. Did this
mean that he was out of touch with the realities of daily life? Perhaps. But Hall had
said that “freedom is the native air and vital breath of student life,” and that “the
student must have freedom to be lazy, make his own minor morals,” and “go to
extremes at the age when excesses teach wisdom.”65 In the context of a scientific
understanding of the needs of adolescents, these boys were healthfully delaying
adult responsibility.
Many scholars of higher education have explored the period before World
War II as the phase when elite universities contrived to keep out Jewish students.
Universities that used standard college-­specific entrance exams found that their
percentages of Jewish students increased year after year. Harvard, Yale, and Prince­
ton looked with horror at Columbia and Penn. At Harvard, rich students dwelled
in private apartments, while the poorer and less-­well-­connected young men lived
in older buildings in the Yard and elsewhere on campus, one of which was called
“Little Jerusalem.”66 Admissions officials (themselves constituting a new profes-
sion) needed to develop ways of preserving slots for Old Stock Protestants, and so

Yanni.indd 25 15/01/2019 10:25:23 PM

 Figure I.12. College men in raccoon coats singing a fight song. Saturday Evening Post, November
16, 1929. Illustration by Alan Foster. Collection of the author.

Yanni.indd 26 15/01/2019 10:25:24 PM

 Introduction 27

they invented desirable traits such as “well-­roundedness,” the lack of which effec-
tively kept out young men who had high entrance exam scores but no extracur­
ricular activities in high school. Admissions officials also gave preference to legacy
students, those applicants whose fathers had attended the same colleges. Catholic
students were affected by this systematic discrimination, but to a lesser degree
than Jews, because Catholics had their own parallel world of higher education that
relied on the teaching expertise of a variety of religious orders. African Americans
attended college in such small numbers that while the admissions regulations did
discriminate against them, the regulations were not aimed at them.
In the 1920s, male and female students began to date openly, in contrast to
earlier forms of courting, which involved sanctioned social events such as dances
and sleigh rides. Even one-­on-­one meetings between men and women were chap-
eroned. (It is not that college men were not having sex before this time—­obviously,
they were. College men sought out prostitutes or pursued women who lived in
the town, who were considered more suitable for sexual liaisons than female stu-
dents.)67 Students who were dating in the 1920s often visited relatively new kinds
of commercial establishments, such as amusement parks, ice cream parlors, and
cinemas. Some adults saw these locales as benign, whereas others saw them as
ripe with the possibility of delinquency, especially the dark, emotional hothouse
of the movie theater.68
College officials tried their best to monitor the relationships between male
and female students. At one university, the rules for dating were set out in a pam-
phlet that showed a cartoon hen pointing an accusatory wing at a beleaguered
rooster. Her instructions included “Dress sharp and be sharp and you won’t have a
problem with the women.” And, setting the bar a bit lower: “You are responsible
for returning your date to the proper hall.”69 Students and administrators reached
an impasse, as students asked for more freedom at the same time deans were seek-
ing to protect female students from scandal, unwanted pregnancy, and ruined
marriage prospects. At state-­funded universities, especially, it was expected that
on-­campus students would be managed and controlled; state legislators insisted
on it.70
Dating was one of many social changes that rocked female adolescents; riding
in cars, smoking, cutting their hair, shortening their skirts, swing dancing, and pet-
ting became part of college girls’ lives.71 The automobile offered students privacy
and mobility. Before the car, college officials never had to worry about any of their
female charges being entirely alone with a man. A ride in a horseless carriage could
be deadly for a young lady’s reputation (not to mention just plain deadly). There
was a general uptick in smoking across the entire American population in the

Yanni.indd 27 15/01/2019 10:25:24 PM

 28 Introduction

1920s; not surprisingly, this trend extended to college students. Smoking on cam-
pus was another vexed issue; tobacco was a substance common to men and prosti-
tutes, neither association particularly advantageous for the so-­called coed.72
During the 1920s and 1930s, student deans became more visible on college
campuses. They valued their role as guardians, and they served in loco parentis.
Their increased role did not necessarily lead to their having any influence on archi-
tectural projects, but they did weigh in on programming decisions. Gregory Blim-
ling refers to this stage as “holism,” when student affairs experts asserted that the
residence hall was an integral part of the educational pathway.73 Indeed, the term
dormitory still makes many deans cringe. They much prefer residence hall, because
the literal meaning of dormitory is a place to sleep. (Having buckled to colloquial
usage, I continue to use both dormitory and residence hall.) A pervasive doctrine
among student affairs professionals is that students must live on campus to enjoy
the fullest benefit of the collegiate experience. Deans of students typically argue
that it is not enough for the university to train the student’s mind; rather, a person
of strong moral fiber, a good citizen, a self-­actualized individual, an authentic
human being—­a whole person—­must emerge from the university. This principle
was in effect before student affairs deans found themselves meeting the challenge
that redefined their profession: the influx of students after World War II.
According to Thomas Hine, the word teenager was first used in Popular Science
magazine in 1941 and came into wide usage during the war.74 Hine elucidates:
“What was new about the idea of the teenager at the time the word first appeared
during World War II was the assumption that all young people, regardless of
their class, location, or ethnicity, should have essentially the same experience,
spent with people exactly the same age, in an environment defined by high school
and pop culture.”75 By the mid-­1950s, the stereotypical teenager represented fun:
hand-­holding couples danced the jitterbug on the pages of every magazine and
on American Bandstand. Chuck Berry wrote and recorded “Maybellene” in 1955;
Elvis Presley’s first hit record, “Heartbreak Hotel,” came out in 1956. Girls wore
bobby socks and poodle skirts; boys sported narrow ties and suede shoes. That
said, even very young returning veterans saw themselves not as carefree teens
but rather as men (some hardened by war) who needed college degrees to climb
up a rung or two on the social ladder.
In contrast to the 1950s, the 1960s was a time of overt radicalism on college
campuses. Students rejected in loco parentis; they did not need caretaking. They
were adults who wanted to be treated as such. In 1968, student protests were inter-
national. The French educational system broke apart, as did others. Protests against
the Vietnam War, demonstrations supporting civil rights, freely available birth

Yanni.indd 28 15/01/2019 10:25:24 PM

 Introduction 29

Figure I.13. At Rutgers, students protested the Nixon administration’s policy in Cambodia on
May 4, 1970. They registered their disdain by occupying Old Queens, the first purpose-­built home
of the college, constructed between 1809 and 1826, which was then serving as the president’s
office and the administrative headquarters for the university. R-­photo, student life, Special
Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries.

control pills, and recreational drug use completely transformed the identity of
the college student, even if not all students tuned in and dropped out. At Rutgers
University and many others, protesters arranged takeovers of the main adminis­
tration buildings. Occupying physical space was a means of demonstrating their
considerable power. College students wanted to be seen as human beings, not raw
material for the university–­industrial–­military complex. At the height of the Free
Speech Movement protests at Berkeley in 1964, Mario Savio, a graduate student
and movement leader, shouted from the top of a police car:

And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the
levers, upon all the apparatus—­and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to

Yanni.indd 29 15/01/2019 10:25:24 PM

 30 Introduction

indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it—­that unless you’re
free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!76

These were serious adults, albeit young, who wanted to turn the world upside
down. How different from the lighthearted Jazz Age boys: those kids had no inter-
est in throwing themselves on the machine, lest their raccoon coats get caught
in the gears. One of the most peculiar aspects of the history of dormitories is that
the building type itself has, by and large, persisted for centuries, even though the
character of students has changed dramatically. Only a sliver of the population,
almost all privileged, attended college in the colonial period. In contrast, in 2014,
52 percent of U.S. high school graduates from low-­income families, 66 percent
from middle-­income families, and 82 percent from high-­income families attended
college.77

WHY STUDY RESIDENCE HALLS NOW?

Residence halls are just as important today as they have ever been, even though
one might think that distance learning would make them obsolete. It is my hope
that Living on Campus will serve as a resource for any curious person who has
worked or lived in a dormitory, and for prospective students and their families,
college administrators, architects, and designers. Fifty years have passed since the
progressive Kresge College built its dormitories in the woods; much has changed
in higher education. Everyone who has lived in a dorm is a self-­proclaimed expert,
even without the historical knowledge that experts ordinarily require. I hope this
book goes a long way toward answering questions and encouraging people to ask
new ones.
The Epilogue to this book explores current trends in student housing. A
convergence of disparate forces in recent years (the corporatization of the univer-
sity, growing inequality in society at large, the rise of online learning) might have
doomed the residence hall, and yet a survey of current practices in higher educa-
tion suggests an opposite trend: colleges are building ever more elaborate resi-
dence halls, some of which resemble five-­star hotels. The question is not only “Why
have residence halls survived?” but also “Why are collegiate officials building more
of them?” They build residence halls because student affairs is now an established,
entrenched profession; deans of students produce social science scholarship that
demonstrates that living on campus improves graduation rates, produces happier
students, and contributes to leadership skills. University vice presidents build resi-
dence halls because Americans are nostalgic, although we prefer that our nostalgia

Yanni.indd 30 15/01/2019 10:25:24 PM

 Introduction 31

come with a lot of bandwidth. On the one hand, some parents remember their
college days fondly; they want their children to have the same experience they had.
On the other hand, there are parents who are stunned by the country-­club ambi-
ence of the newest residence halls, like Osprey Fountains at the University of
North Florida, where lightly clad students de-­stress in curving swimming pools
and bake in the sun within an arm’s length of their splendid rooms. As universities
compete to build the most elaborate residence halls, colleges that fall behind in
the amenities “arms race,” as it is frequently called, are unable to recruit the best
students. Some parents see their children (and some students see themselves) as
consumers: they demand parking spaces, Starbucks, and fast Wi-­Fi for streaming
movies, sports, and gaming.
The cost of living in a dormitory (whether or not it has the most up-­to-­date
amenities) is greater than the cost of living at home. Less affluent students com-
mute and work part-­time jobs. Others take their classes online and thus have
almost no opportunity for meaningful networking. (For distance learning, col-
leges have no need to provide dorms—­or any architecture at all.) Differing hous-
ing opportunities exacerbate the social disparities between the poorest students
and the richest. Members of the latter group spend their college days enhancing
potential professional connections. But this is nothing new: it is merely the present-­
day expression of Benjamin Franklin’s idea that students should attend college to
“zealously unite.”

Yanni.indd 31 15/01/2019 10:25:24 PM

This page intentionally left blank
 1

College Housing for Men

Fellowship and Exclusivity

A mong the best-­known college novels is Owen Johnson’s Stover at Yale, in

which the idealistic football-­playing protagonist, Dink Stover, conquers
the Ivy League without attending a class or reading a book. Upon arriv-
ing at the brick-­and-­stone campus, he whispers to himself:

“And this is it—­this is Yale,” he said reverently, with a little tightening of the
breath.
They had begun at last—­the happy, care-­free years that every one proclaimed.
Four glorious years, good times, good fellows, and a free and open fight to be
among the leaders and leave a name on the roll of fame. . . . “Four years,” he said
softly. “The best, the happiest I’ll ever know!”1

It is worth questioning why college was supposed to be the best four years of a
young man’s life, just as it is worth looking at the buildings in which collegians
dwelled. Was it the best four years because they memorized Cicero or studied
Euclidian geometry? Probably not. Then as now, book learning was one small part
of the college boy’s life; socializing was the key to the collegian’s heart.
This chapter analyzes two building types, closely related but quite easily dis­
tinguished: the dormitory and the fraternity house. We begin in the middle of
the seventeenth century and progress quickly toward 1900. Both building types
crisscross the boundaries between home and institution, between domestic and
public (see the Appendix). The long period covered by this chapter allows for an
exploration of the beginnings of on-­campus housing for men, the dorm’s down-
ward turn after passage of the Land Grant Act (also known as the Morrill Act) in
1862 and the rise of the research university, and the subsequent burst of fraternity

33

Yanni.indd 33 15/01/2019 10:25:24 PM

 34 College Housing for Men

building. After the Civil War, officials at research universities and the land-­grant
colleges turned their attention to laboratories and lost interest in constructing
dormitories. But the dormitory made a decisive comeback in the early twentieth
century, when campus leaders and deans convinced many people that living on
campus promoted the good character of young men. In terms of architecture, dor-
mitories tended to be large facilities that featured long institutional hallways or
several entryways, while fraternities resembled large houses with interiors such
as might be found in men’s clubs. Although this book is primarily about the archi-
tecture of dormitories, that story makes little sense without some background on
the arrival of the upstart fraternity.
The typical college student during the colonial and Federal periods was a
white boy between the ages of fourteen and eighteen who sought higher education
to gain prestige as well as knowledge.2 Clearly some youths aimed for careers in
various churches, but historian of education John Thelin disputes the long-­held
notion that the early American colleges existed primarily to train clergymen.
As Thelin points out, most eighteenth-­century colleges had no divinity schools,
thus it is reasonable to conclude that these institutions had multifaceted missions
to shape boys into men.3 Although colonial colleges did not teach trades or pro-
vide instruction that led directly to a profession, they set young men up for entry
into the upper class. While memorizing Greek might not seem useful on the
surface, the ability to insert a quotation from Homer into a legal argument, for
example, signified gentlemanly skill.4 Professors, students’ parents, and students
themselves considered the subjects of the college curriculum to be universal;
they encompassed the basic knowledge that enabled a young man to enter public
life. Although all college students were elite, in the sense that most men did not
go to college at all, class stratification endured within the ranks. The less wealthy,
who were destined to become teachers and ministers, and often studied hard,
stood in opposition to the affluent, who would enter into the family business
or take their place as landed gentry, a status afforded in the colonies by wealth
rather than birth alone.5 Helen L. Horowitz’s outstanding scholarship on under-
graduate life makes clear that class disparities were part of the social experience of
collegians from the start. The wealthiest boys were the insiders, the consummate
“college men.”6 They ridiculed the outsiders, seeing them as sanctimonious bump-
kins.7 The emerging affluent class treated college more casually than did their
poorer classmates.
In 1636, Congregationalists in Cambridge founded Harvard, the first college
in English-­speaking North America. Harvard’s earliest building, completed in
1642, was a three-­story wooden structure that contained all the purposes of the

Yanni.indd 34 15/01/2019 10:25:25 PM

 College Housing for Men 35

new institution.8 As one historian of Harvard has written, Harvard was meant to
be “a society of scholars where teachers and students lived in the same building
under common discipline, associating not only in lecture rooms but at meals,
in chambers, at prayers, and in recreation.”9 In contrast to such lofty goals, the
second building at Harvard—­which was, in fact, the second academic building
in the entirety of what would later become the United States—­was a dormitory
built especially to discriminate. The Indian College, completed in the 1650s, was
a residence for Native American students. The Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in New England, a group that saw bringing Christianity to the New
World’s residents as the major purpose of the outpost colony, paid for the small
structure. Almost no white person would dwell with an Indian, thus the British
charity provided funds for the structure so that about twenty Native Americans
would have somewhere to live in the vicinity of the college. In addition to spaces
for sleeping, it included a kitchen, a dining area, and a room for a printing press,
therefore it was not exclusively a living space. While the earlier college build-
ing was made of wood, the Indian College was of solid brick construction.10 (In
spite of its original sturdiness, it was decrepit by 1698, the year in which it was

Figure 1.1. Indian College, Harvard University, circa 1655, conjectural restoration by H. R.
Shurtleff, in Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1936). The Indian College housed a small number of young Native
American men, including Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck of the Wampanoag group. Cheeshahteaumuck
was the only Indian graduate of Harvard during the colonial period. The Indian College was
demolished in 1698.

Yanni.indd 35 15/01/2019 10:25:25 PM

 36 College Housing for Men

Figure 1.2. Indian College, Harvard University, circa 1655, plan. 1 = bedroom; 2 = study carrel;
3 = entryway and staircase. Drawing by John Giganti.

demolished.) From the very beginning of colleges in North America, student

housing existed to establish hierarchies.
When Harvard students wanted to get together in small groups, they did so
in their rooms or in their friends’ rooms. Students’ rooms did not contain much
more than they needed to sleep and study. Some evidence of what students kept
in their rooms is found in inventories submitted to the provincial government
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony requesting remuneration after the fire that de-
stroyed Harvard Hall in 1764. Ebenezer and Samuel Barnard, brothers, compiled
a particularly detailed list, and their request was indeed granted. About fifty books
(listed by title) and a set of maps went up in flames. The brothers also lost hats,
jackets, a belt buckle, a stone jug, handkerchiefs, andirons, and a fishing rod. As
most colonial-­era college students did, they furnished the room themselves, and
thus in the fire they lost not only the bedstead but also two tables and six chairs.
If the Barnards had a bedroom with a small study attached, then they might have
put two chairs in the study and the other four in the bedroom, although this is
speculative. Their inventory listed each article of clothing and each individual
book. They must have enjoyed tea in their rooms, because they had a kettle, three
black teapots, “6 Silver Spoons,” and “7 China Tea Cups.”11 (Their honesty is
impressive: the whole building burned to the ground, so why not claim to have lost
a full set of twelve teacups?) Several other students submitted inventories as well,
and all seem to have had tea-­making supplies in their rooms.

Yanni.indd 36 15/01/2019 10:25:25 PM

 College Housing for Men 37

The Barnard brothers included bedding in their summary, noting that they had
owned a “Very good Bed quilt,” “2 blankitts,” “2 Pr. of sheets,” and “2 Pr. of pil-
lowcases,” but one “bedsted.”12 This indicates that they shared a bed, which would
have been typical for that time. Stephen Peabody, a student at Harvard in the
1760s, observed in his diary that in addition to his chambermate, he shared his bed
with so many unwanted “inhabitants” (bedbugs) that he had to “get it scalt by Mrs.
Pierce.”13 (Mrs. Pierce was one of two women who maintained the residences.)
Not coincidentally, Peabody’s diary includes frequent mentions of itchiness, doc-
tor visits, and the procurement of ointment. The day after Peabody discovered
bedbugs, he found out his roommate was moving; this caused him some concern,
and he quickly petitioned to have an acquaintance from home take the open spot.
Since he would be living in such close quarters with his new partner, he did not
want to take chances on a random assignment.14
Overall, documents from the period suggest that dormitory rooms were well
furnished, but in terms of the daily life of the student and his comforts compared
to a private house, the bedroom-­plus-­study was probably smaller than the several
rooms (parlor, hall, bedroom) that a young man occupied at home. Early dorms
purposely lacked spaces for socializing; professors wanted to keep collegians from
congregating in large groups, because when they did, they frequently got into trou-
ble by drinking, betting, and fighting.
The first Stoughton Hall, also at Harvard, was probably the first freestanding,
fully specialized dormitory in the colonies. Built in 1698, Stoughton Hall had no
purpose other than housing. It did not have an internal corridor. Instead, it
employed a plan with bedrooms off of staircases. The structure was long and nar-
row, with a plan somewhat like that of the Indian College. In fact, the builders
used bricks from the defunct Indian College to construct this new dormitory. In
one early print, we see that the dormitory was longer than it was wide. Indeed, it
was ninety-­seven feet long and less than twenty-­three feet in breadth. This Stough-
ton Hall was one room wide, with a wall that divided the long rectangle into two
parts. On each side of this central wall, there were two chambers separated by a
passageway. The plan may be deduced from the building’s facade, and further hints
survive in the form of a drawing made by Harvard president Edward Holyoke.15
The Holyoke plan, made for the laying of a drain, allows us to conclude that there
must have been stairs in the two passageways, even though they are not shown.16
According to architectural historian Bainbridge Bunting, the structure, the first
example of a gift from an individual to Harvard, was “four stories high and 23 by
100 feet in area, [and] it could house forty students.”17 The half-­width windows
corresponded to the locations of the studies inside the structure, and the larger

Yanni.indd 37 15/01/2019 10:25:25 PM

 38 College Housing for Men

windows admitted light into the sleeping chambers. Dormers punched through
the roof, an arched ornament in the center on the second floor displayed the
Stoughton coat of arms, the doors were flanked by pilasters, and the corners were
bolstered by quoins.18 Outdoor privies were located near the president’s orchard.
Students paid porters to bring water from the nearby well.19 Built without a base-
ment, Old Stoughton (as it was sometimes called) was not watertight, and thus
Bunting praises it for its outward appearance, if not for its structural soundness:

The orderly fenestration, the use of a clearly defined main cornice and . . . the
presence of pedimented door frames, quoins, string courses, and an inscription
panel topped by a small pediment mark this clearly as a Georgian design. Here
at the very end of the seventeenth century Harvard finally put the Medieval
tradition behind.20

Figure 1.3. “A Prospect of the Colleges in Cambridge in New England,” print by William Burgis,
1743. Stoughton Hall, in the center of this image, was a purpose-­built dormitory constructed in
1698; it was located between Harvard Hall (left, with the cupola) and Massachusetts Hall (right).
Stoughton Hall was likely the first structure built exclusively to house college students in the
English-­speaking colonies. I. N. Phelps Collection of American Historical Prints, The Miriam and
Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, New York Public Library.

Yanni.indd 38 15/01/2019 10:25:26 PM

 College Housing for Men 39

The building was demolished shortly after the Revolutionary War, partly because
of damage caused by soldiers quartered there.
From 1695 to 1700, when Harvard had been in existence for six decades, the
College of William and Mary erected its first building. It was not fully complete
when it burned in 1705. The replacement, today considered to be the oldest con-
tinuously occupied academic building in the United States, is the so-­called Wren
Building of 1705. (Harvard and Yale can boast of having had earlier structures,
but they are no longer standing.) The history of the Wren Building is complex,
as several buildings were constructed on the same site, and the current structure
was largely reconstructed in the 1930s.21 However, its basic functions are known
and were typical in their time: the multipurpose structure contained student hous-
ing, professors’ offices, a chapel, a library, and classrooms.22 In plan, the U shape
contained smaller rooms on one range, with a chapel and great hall forming the

Figure 1.4. Wren Building, College of William and Mary, second building, 1705. Like many early
collegiate structures, the Wren Building contained all the functions of the young school, including
housing students. Daguerreotype, circa 1850. Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary.

Yanni.indd 39 15/01/2019 10:25:26 PM

 40 College Housing for Men

sides of the U. Bedrooms were upstairs.23 This is an example of a three-­sided quad-

rangle, although the original intention was to construct a completely enclosed
donut. A closed quadrangle can appear to be less public because it creates a decid-
edly private outdoor space. The U shape is more public and open, welcoming its
audience. In the Wren Building, the second story of the front range had a central
corridor with bedrooms on both sides.
The College of William and Mary was closely tied to the Anglican Church.
Architectural historian Paul V. Turner has discerned ideological differences among

Figure 1.5. Wren Building, College of William and Mary, 1705, plan, first floor. The chapel was
in the southern wing and was double height. The northern wing held the great hall. 1 = chapel;
2 = classroom; 3 = porch (piazza); 4 = lobby; 5 = grammar school; 6 = lecture room; 7 = great
hall. Drawing by John Giganti based on a drawing from 1976 by E. Leroy Phillips for HABS/HAER,
Library of Congress.

Yanni.indd 40 15/01/2019 10:25:27 PM

 College Housing for Men 41

three architectural types associated with college campuses: the closed quadran-
gle (with roots in Catholic monasteries), the three-­sided quadrangle, and the de-
tached college building (associated with Puritans).24 But as Douglas Shand-­Tucci
observes, in the case of Harvard, the association of detached buildings with Con-
gregationalism is “a bit of a stretch.”25 The religious categorizations do not hold
up in relation to the Wren Building, either. As noted above, and as Turner himself
explains, the Wren Building was originally planned to be a closed quadrangle, but
the fourth side was never added. It is hard to believe, therefore, that the three-­sided

Figure 1.6. Wren Building, College of William and Mary, 1705, plan, third floor. Student
rooms were on a double-­loaded corridor in the front range. The two back wings served as storage.
1 = bedroom; 2 = corridor; 3 = attic storage. Drawing by John Giganti based on a drawing from
1976 by E. Leroy Phillips for HABS/HAER, Library of Congress.

Yanni.indd 41 15/01/2019 10:25:27 PM

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
needed for the service of the Court. In the fourteenth century it was
reckoned that the Court employed an army of 20,000 of such
people. These would all have to be housed somehow, and the nearer
the protection of the castle the better; hence the town on the
slopes.
The Home Park, in which is the mausoleum, borders the river. It is
separated by a road from the Great Park, made for hunting. Pope's
poem on "Windsor Forest" is not particularly beautiful; perhaps the
best descriptive lines are those that follow:

There, interspersed in lawns and opening glades,

Thin trees arise that shun each others shades:
Here in full light the russet plains extend;
There, wrapt in clouds, the bluish hills ascend.

Windsor Park is introduced by Shakspeare as the scene of some of

Falstaff's escapades, an honour shared by the neat, bright village of
Datchet, opposite. Datchet is a model village grouped about a green,
and the houses are softened by all the usual creepers and bushes:
we see roses, jasmine, laurustinus, magnolia, and ampelopsis at
every turn. Above and below Datchet this clean neatness continues.
The Victoria and Albert bridges are severe, and the weir and the
great bow of the channel, which is cut by the lock-stream, have no
particular characteristics. The whole neighbourhood has rather the
air of holding itself on its best behaviour, as though royalty might
any moment appear upon the scene. As might be expected, the
scenery is rather like the poetry it inspired. Here is Sir John
Denham's effusion about Coopers Hill:
 My eye, descending from the hill, surveys
Where Thames, among the wanton valleys strays:
Thames, the most loved of all the Ocean's sons
By his old sire, to his embraces runs:
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity.

There is a pretty reach below Old Windsor, where willows and

poplars are massed effectively. It is in places like this, where they
grow abundantly, that the beautiful tawny colour which willows
assume in the spring, just before bursting into leaf, can be best
seen.
The Bells of Ouseley stands at a bend, and with its tinted walls and
the old elm tree growing close to the entrance, is a typical old-
English Inn. The road to Staines passes by the water's edge, and the
guide-post is less reticent than guide-posts are wont to be, for it tells
us this is the "Way to Staines, except at high-water."
As we pass softly back up the current to Eton, we think how often in
this reach the incomparable Izaak and his friend Sir Henry Wotton
fished together.
I sat down under a willow tree by the water side ... for I could there
sit quietly, and, looking on the water, see some fishes sport
themselves in the silver streams, others leaping at flies of several
shapes and colours; ... looking down the meadows, could see here a
boy gathering lilies and ladysmocks, and there a girl cropping
culverkeys and cowslips.

Wotton built a fishing box a mile below the college, from which he
and Walton often sallied forth during the fifteen years he was
provost of Eton, and to his rod many a "jealous trout that low did lie,
rose at a well dissembled fly," as he himself has left on record.
 Ye distant spires, ye antique towers
That crown the wat'ry glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver-winding way.

—Gray.

In rounding the great sweep of the river below the London and
South Western railway bridge, we catch at once the pinnacles of
Eton chapel—most glorious of chapels—and see the green playing
fields.
The long tree-covered island of Romney, on one side of which lies
the lock, ends in a terrible "snout," strengthened by "camp-
shedding." This point is locally known as the "Cobbler," and is a
source of peril to many an inexperienced boatman.
 ETON CHAPEL FROM THE FIELDS

The bridge over the river can, unfortunately, hardly be called a good
feature in the landscape—it is as ugly as a railway bridge! Just above
it is a row of boat-houses, and then follows the Brocas, the famous
meadow. Above the bridge is a tiny islet which serves as an
objective in the Fourth of June procession of boats. The boats come
down and round the island, and once more returning, pass under
the bridge to the lock, having made a sort of spiral. Nearly all the
Eton races are rowed in this strip of the river, though, of course,
Henley Regatta is the greatest event in the boating calendar. A small
string of islands faces some little public gardens, and away
northward winds the Great Western Railway on a series of small
arches which carry it over the marshy ground, no doubt at one time
under water.
Beyond the line is a small backwater known as Cuckoo weir, the
bathing place of the lower boys. Here the swimming trials take
place, when a set of trembling pink youngsters stand in a punt ready
to take a graceful header, or, from sheer nervousness, to fall with an
ugly flop smack upon the water and be disqualified for the time
being!
The bathing place of the upper boys, called by the dignified title of
Athens, is further up in the main river, near the curious island on
which is Windsor racecourse. The river winds giddily in and out
between the end of this island and Upper and Lower Hope, which lie
between it and Cuckoo weir. A mill stands at the end of the long
narrow stream that separates the racecourse from the mainland, and
on the other side of the island is Boveney Lock. The quaint old
chapel stands amid trees further up.
Above the island was once Surley Hall, a favourite resort of the
Etonians, but it is now pulled down, and Monkey Island is the place
to go to on half-holidays. Monkey Island is a good way up, and is the
third of a row of islands. The little one below it, called Queen's ait,
now belongs to the Eton boys, who have built a small cottage on it.
Monkey Island itself is a curious and attractive place, except when
the launches come up from Windsor on Saturdays, bringing
hundreds of people, who sit about at little tables on the green sward
under the famous walnut trees, and call for refreshments. There is a
large pavilion, part boat-house, which belongs to the Eton boys,
where they can get tea served without mingling with the
townspeople. Near it is a quaint little temple. This, as well as the
house, now the hotel, was built by the third Duke of Marlborough, a
man of curious taste. The hall in the hotel is painted all round with
the figures of monkeys engaged in various sports and pastimes.
There is a broad frieze which appears to have been executed in
water colours on plaster; the ceiling is likewise painted, but in rather
a different style. The monkeys are a good size, and attract a vast
crowd of visitors. The pretty verandah round the hotel redeems its
appearance externally. Inside it has at once all the attractions and
disadvantages of an old house—low ceilings, very small rooms; but
on the other hand there are windings and twistings, crooked
passages and odd corners, that delight the heart of those to whom
machine-made houses are an abomination. The duke's bedroom is
shown, and is as queerly shaped a room as ever mortal man
conceived. Monkey Island is being embanked with the precious
gravel dredged from the bed of the Thames, and, though no doubt a
necessary precaution, as the river insidiously breaks off what it can,
the operation is not a beautiful one. The island is very proud of its
walnut trees, and well it may be, for they are a great change after
the ubiquitous willows, and their gnarled stems and fine shady
leaves are just the right element in such a scene as a gay lawn
covered with summer folk in summer dresses.
From Monkey Island the little church tower of Bray can be seen, but
before reaching it Bray Lock has to be negotiated, and here are a
long sinuous osier-covered ait and a mill, making, as usual, a
convenient backwater.
Bray is truly a charming place, and one could find it in one's heart to
forgive the vicar who turned his coat to keep his vicarage. The real
man lived in the reign of Henry VIII. and his successors, and
changed his religious practices in conformity with those of the
sovereign for the time being, turning from Roman Catholic to
Reformed Church, Reformed to Roman Catholic, and back once more
with ease and pliability. In the ballad he is represented as living in
the seventeenth century, and his gymnastics refer to the varying
fortunes of the house of Stuart, and the Romish tendencies of the
later kings of that house. Fuller, with his usual quaintness, remarks
of him that he had seen some martyrs burnt at Windsor and "found
this fire too hot for his tender temper." But one would fain believe it
was not altogether cowardice, but also a love of his delightful village,
that made him so amenable. The little flint and stone tower of the
church peeps at the river over a splendid assortment of evergreens
—laurels, holm oaks, yews, and spruce firs being particularly
noticeable—and the old vicarage with this growth of sheltering trees
and its smooth lawn right down to the water's edge, is certainly a
place that one would think twice about before leaving. The village
itself is so irregular that, tiny as it is, one may get lost in it. There
are endless vistas of gable ends, of bowed timbers, of pretty
porches, and worn brick softly embraced by vine or wistaria; yet
even in Bray, new red brick is making its way. One of the most
interesting features is the almshouses, and if one lands by the hotel,
they are reached after only a few minutes' walk. The exterior is very
quaint; large cylindrical yews and hollies, like roly-poly puddings on
end, stand up in stubborn rank before the worn red brick. The statue
of the founder, of an immaculate whiteness, with the glitter of gilt in
the coat-of-arms below, just lightens the effect. Through an ancient
arch one passes to the quadrangle, which is filled with tiny flower-
beds, and surrounded by a low range of red brick with dormer
windows. At the other side is the chapel covered with ivy, and this,
with the little diamond panes and the brightness of the variegated
flower-beds, is home-like and cosy. Yet it must be confessed that in
his well-known picture, "The Harbour of Refuge," admittedly taken
from Bray, Frederick Walker, the artist, has greatly improved the
scene with artistic licence. The raised terrace at the side, the greater
width of the quadrangle, the smooth green lawn and sheltering
central tree in his picture, are far more harmonious and beautiful
than the reality.
Bray is a very popular haunt with artists and boating people. In
summer the George Hotel cannot take in all its visitors, and beds are
hired all over the village, consequently, anyone wishing to spend
some weeks in Bray must make arrangements well beforehand. This
is not to be wondered at, because, as well as its own attractions, it
is within easy reach of Maidenhead and the delights beyond, and its
unspoilt quaintness makes it ideal to stay in. Long may Bray remain
as it is, unaltered and a tiny village.
 CHAPTER XIV

MAGNA CHARTA

Magna Charta Island is

something of a shock at first
sight; it is so exceptionally
well cared for and so pretty.
One pictures a tangle of wild
trees, a mass of rushes,
osiers perhaps, and general
grimness. The osiers are
confined to a fraction of the
island; on the remainder is a
prettily-built house of a fair
size, with the very best sort
of river-lawn, on which grow
various fine and regular trees.
Many are the evergreens; and
the bosky holm oak, the
dignified stone pine, and the
flourishing walnut, seen in
conjunction with the
beautifully kept turf and bright flower-beds, are altogether unlike
one's conception of the place.
It is true that, though the island has the name of it, it is now
generally supposed that the actual signing of our great charter of
liberties took place on the mainland. John had delayed, and played
false, and postponed the issue for long, but he knew now that all
was up, and he was cornered. A truce was declared, and from
Windsor he agreed to meet his barons and "concede to them the
laws and liberties which they asked." The fifteenth of June was fixed
for the day, and Runney Mead, or Runnymede, for the place. With
the barons were almost the whole of the English nobility; with John,
certain ecclesiastical powers, namely, the Archbishops of Canterbury
and Dublin, and seven bishops, as well as some earls and barons. It
is quite obvious that the barons could have had no idea of the vast
consequences of their act. They would have been astonished could
they have foreseen that it would become the basis of the English
constitution. They merely wanted to bind down a particular king who
had outraged their liberties.
One can hardly imagine a better place for the assembling of a great
body of armed men than these meadows by the river. The land is as
flat as a platform, and sheltered to the south by the heights of
Cooper's Hill, which rise like the tiers in an amphitheatre. The Long
Mead, with the exception of the road now running across it, must
have looked very much then as it does now. Runney Mead is more
altered, because it is shut in by hedges. We know not if the day
were fine or overcast when the great charter was signed; but when
the deed was done John, in a rage, retired to Windsor. The barons
remained on the meads for about ten days, during which the place
must have been like a fair.
It is very hot on this part of the river on a sunny day. The trees
growing on the banks are all on the north side, and consequently
give little shade. They border Ankerwyke Park, and grow so close to
the water that many of their roots are in it. The swallows dart to and
fro, and clouds of gnats dance like thistledown in the air. Near the
banks grow many flowers. The spotted knotweed or persicaria, with
its bright flesh-coloured flowers, is sometimes in water, sometimes
on the land; the common forget-me-not can be seen peeping up
with its bright blue eyes; the pink willow herb flourishes; and the
yellow iris and the purple loosestrife are also to be seen. And when
there is no wind the scent of the meadow-sweet and the dog-roses
becomes almost overpowering.
Ankerwyke was once a priory. It was appropriated by Henry VIII.,
who is said to have carried on the courtship of Anne Boleyn under
the mighty chestnuts for which it was even then famous:

The tyrant Harry felt love's softening flame,

And sighing breathed his Anna Boleyn's name.

A bit of doggerel just about worthy of the occasion!

A more interesting association, though one that leads us rather far
from the river, is Milton's residence at Horton. He lived here with his
parents for five years after leaving Cambridge, and no doubt his
rambles over country which would not then be hedged in and cut up
as it is now, often led him in the direction of the river. It was this
scenery, noted at those deeply impressionable years, that he could
still see when earthly sight was gone.
Lycidas and Comus were both written in the next four or five years,
and in

The willows and the hazel copses green

we have a touch of real nature breaking through the conventional

allusions to vines and wild thyme; also:
 Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint, enamell'd eyes
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears.
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears.

—Lycidas.

By the rushy-fringed bank

Where grows the willow and the osier dank.

Thus I set my printless feet

O'er the cowslip's velvet head
That bends not as I tread.

—Comus.

Not very far below Ankerwyke, the river Coln runs into the Thames
near Bell Weir Lock, and a little bit above Staines is London Stone,
standing in a meadow close by the water. It marked the former
jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor of London over the river, but these
rights are now vested in the Thames Conservators. Staines does not
make the most of itself, or sufficiently endeavour to veil those
unsightlinesses incidental to a town. The large gasometers opposite
London Stone are not the only blemishes. Standing on the bridge
and looking up-stream there are many ugly, yellow-brick,
manufacturing buildings to be seen; while the screen of willows does
not hide piles of untidy stones, rusty old iron and other uglinesses.
Even the very passable island in the centre does not atone. Down
stream things are a little better, though the want of architectural
beauty in the new church by the river and the "plastered-on"
pinnacles of the parish church are both eyesores.
From Staines, however, one may pass rapidly to a fascinating corner
at Penton Hook.
 CHAPTER XV

PENTON HOOK

Penton Hook is quite peculiar. To a select little coterie of people it is

the place on the river, but to hundreds of others it is not known at
all. To its own manifest advantage it is off the "hard high road," and
the scorchers and the bounders, and the multitude generally, fly by
within a comparatively short distance, little knowing what they have
missed. But one or two of the favoured few turn down to quiet little
Laleham, and wheeling round a corner come right on to the tow-
path by the river's brink; in a hundred yards they are at Penton
Hook. But though the Hook is very select and highly favoured, that is
not to say it lacks population, only—it is a population of the right
sort. Little camps of charming bungalows dot the banks both above
and below the lock. Some are built on ground leased from the
Conservancy, some on that of private owners. To each man is
allotted a strip of ground, with so much river frontage, whereon he
builds to his own taste and fancy a little one-storeyed white-painted
house, and lays out the tiny garden from which his own white steps
reach down to the water. Think of the joy of it! The leader in an
important case has been in a stuffy court all day, burdened with his
wig and gown, seeing all the dust and stains of unswept corners of
human nature; accusing, with upraised finger, the brazen witness
who has just perjured himself; dragging from that yellow-faced man
the secret he thought buried. Faugh! But the court rises; he is away.
The motor takes him down in less than an hour. Gone are the stifling
garments; the worn and wicked faces. The dull roar of Strand traffic
is replaced by the splashing of the water as it bounds over the weir.
The freed man tumbles into flannels and lies full length on the green
grass, smoking, with the water flowing at his feet, or he dawdles in
a boat round the Hook, tempting the fish with all the decoys he
knows. Happy man!
The trees near the bungalows, and those that fringe the meadows
near, are not pollarded; there is space between their tall stems. The
short grass, gemmed with pink-tipped daisies, can be seen
everywhere, and there is air, and freshness, and openness for
everyone. The white paint of the bungalows and their neat green or
pink roofs, the rows of geraniums, roses, and other flowers carefully
kept and tended, add touches of gaiety and brightness.
There are three weirs, for the river here makes the neatest horse-
shoe in its whole length, and the authorities have cut through the
neck of land, so that the greater part of the stream goes rioting and
tumbling in joyous confusion beneath the great new weir, provided
with a pent-house roof, under which it is always cool on the hottest
summer day, with transparent reflections dancing on the wall and a
ripple and splash below. The second weir, a mere tumbling-weir, is
only a few yards away. The water does not often leap over it unless
it is at flood time, when it affords a safety outlet. The third and
widest is a mixture, half sluice gates and half of the tumbling kind.
At one time there was no weir here, and boats could avoid the lock
by navigating the Hook, but that is now no longer possible. There is
one advantage in it; it keeps the Hook more secluded. The little red
water-gauge house is connected by wires with Staines, and so to all
the rest of England. By an automatic arrangement, the register
shows simultaneously here and at the offices of the water company
what depth of water there is, so that they may know how much they
can take.
At Penton it should be always summer, with dog-roses and
sweetbriar, with placid red cows grazing on the tender grass, with
boats tethered in the lazy current round the bend of the Hook.
An uncommonly good place for fishing it is, this Hook, as the
kingfishers have found out, for they are yearly increasing, and
apparently do not mind the gay tide of summer company that
invades their haunts. Right down on the banks near the lock one
pair nested this year. No steamers churn up the waters and frighten
the fish; only a slow-moving house-boat or two towed to position
and there left, or those drifting boats belonging to young men and
maidens who are content to drift metaphorically as well as actually.
The Abbey river starts away on its own account on the far side of
the Hook, and begins its short course of about a couple of miles, to
fall into the Thames again at Chertsey. It used to be possible to get
up it in a boat, but now it is barred. However, visitors have nothing
to complain of, for the meadows around are singularly open to them,
and the place is not hedged about with restrictions as are so many
river resorts. Numbers of people come down to picnic, and it is no
uncommon sight to see quite a row of motors outside the lock-
keeper's house, while footman or chauffeur carries across the
luncheon hampers to what was once a peninsula but is now an
island. Tradesmen's carts come round too, finding in the swallow-
colony quite enough demand to make it worth their while; and year
by year the bungalows grow. A whole new piece of meadow,
hitherto osier bed, is even now going to be devoted to them. "Why, I
get as many as twenty to thirty applications for land every week,"
says the lock-keeper. It is to be hoped Penton Hook will not become
over-populated, or the delightful freedom from conventionality which
now characterises it might die away. "Ladies who come down here—
why, some of them, they never put a hat on their heads the whole
time, and I was going to say not shoes or stockings either!" The
place is particularly sought after by theatrical people. Miss Ellen
Terry still holds the bungalow she has had for many years. It is
surprising how early the season begins; even at the end of chilly
March a few of the first of the swallows appear.
 CHAPTER XVI

ABOUT CHERTSEY AND WEYBRIDGE

Between Chertsey and

Penton Hook is Laleham,
where the tiny ivy-covered
church is too much hidden
away to be seen easily. An
old red brick moss-grown
wall is the chief object near
the river, and with the
bending trees and quiet
fields there is a sense of
brooding peace which only
remains in places off the
main roads. Matthew Arnold
was born at Laleham and is
buried in the churchyard. His
father, Dr. Arnold of Rugby,
came here in 1819, but he
left when Matthew was only
six, to take the head-
mastership of Rugby.
Between Laleham and Chertsey there is some open, rather untidy
ground on which gypsies are wont to camp. It cannot be said that
the river looks its best above Chertsey. The country is too flat and
open, and on a summer day one is too often scorched. Yet there is
always some beauty to be found, and it is certainly in open spaces
like these that we see best reflected "heaven's own blue." Away to
the west the tiny Abbey river flows in past a mill. By Chertsey bridge
a triumphant victory in regard to right-of-way over the Thames
Conservancy in 1902, is recorded on two newly built villas. Opposite
is the Bridge Hotel, which, with its little bay, its Lombardy poplars
and green lawn, is a pleasant oasis.
Chertsey Abbey, which was of great fame, lay between the town and
the river. It was founded in 666, and some Saxon tiles from the
flooring may be seen in the British Museum. The buildings were
destroyed by the Danes, but it was re-established in 964 as a
Benedictine Monastery.
Nothing shows more the immense power of the monks in England
than these mighty abbeys which studded the country. We have come
across so many, even in our short journey between Oxford and
London, that the fact cannot escape notice; though they probably
were more thickly set beside the river than elsewhere, because, as I
have said, flowing water attracted these old monks for more than
one reason. There is hardly anything left of Chertsey Abbey now, yet
in its prime it was like a small town, giving employment to hundreds
of people. There are a few ivy-covered steps near the back of the
church and an old bit of wall doubtfully supposed to have been part
of the boundary; this is near the Abbey river. Henry VI. was buried
at Chertsey, and his funeral is referred to in Shakespeare's play of
Richard III.:

... after I have solemnly interr'd

At Chertsey monast'ry this noble king,
And wet his grave with my repentant tears.

So he makes the hypocritical Duke of Gloucester speak. Cowley, the

poet, lived in Chertsey for two years before his death. The house still
stands; it has an overhanging storey and is covered with rough
stucco. Charles James Fox was born in a house near, and this
probably decided him in making choice of a residence many years
later, for he chose St. Anne's Hill, only two miles away, which can be
seen far and wide around. There he settled to indulge in the
delightful hobby of improving his grounds.
Below Chertsey Bridge is an excellent punting reach, where the
championship punting competition is held every year in the
beginning of August. This is, doubtless, the reason why Chertsey is
crowded with visitors in the summer, when out of all the
innumerable lodgings scarcely a room is to be had.
The river about Weybridge and Shepperton is much more varied
than at Chertsey, and to my mind variety is a direct element of
beauty in river scenery. We have passed through flat meadows lined
with straight ranks of Lombardy poplars that might belong to
northern France, and then suddenly, at Weybridge, we begin once
more curves and twists and unexpected islands and snug corners.
There is a ferry across the river, and the place seems to get along
wonderfully well without a bridge. In the middle of the stream is a
well-kept island which belonged to the late Mr. D'Oyly Carte; it is
hedged about with an exclusive wall, enclosing a pretty garden. In
the centre is a neat white house with projecting tiles.
In every direction there are numerous boat-building establishments.
The lock island is large and has other buildings on it besides the
lock-keeper's cottage. It is a favourite camping ground in summer,
and has rather an untidy appearance. The wide-mouthed Wey flows
in beside a couple of other islands, and is itself a very attractive
place to explore, winding away through meadows and beneath
overhanging trees. It is, however, not free from locks, though of a
somewhat simpler kind than those on the Thames. Weybridge is a
fresh and pleasant place, rapidly growing in all directions, and in its
gorsy common land and masses of pine woods it reminds one of the
parts of Surrey about Camberley. On the green stands the column
which once presented seven faces to the seven streets in London,
called after it Seven Dials. Since then it has risen in life, having been
bought and surmounted with a coronet instead of the dial stone; this
was in honour of the Duchess of York, who died in 1820. She lived at
Oatlands Park and was very popular.
Oatlands Park is the great place of the neighbourhood. It was once a
hunting ground of King Henry VIII., but now belongs to a large
residential hotel. Nothing remains of the building, which was used by
many of our English monarchs. George IV. entertained here the
Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia, and all the princes and
generals who visited England after Waterloo. In 1790 the Duke of
York, who is commemorated by the column in Waterloo Place,
bought and rebuilt the house, and still later it was in the possession
of the Earl of Ellesmere. Remodelled, the house still stands as the
hotel. A large piece of ornamental water in the grounds is almost as
great an attraction as Virginia Water. Just where the park touches
the river is the place known as Cowey Stakes. It is said that here
Cæsar crossed the river when in pursuit of Cassivelaunus, in 54 B.C.
The stakes, which are no longer to be seen, are supposed to have
been placed there to obstruct his use of the ford. They had been so
long under water, that when found they were like ebony; they were
about six feet long and shod with iron. They appear to have been
too imposing and carefully formed to have been put in for the mere
purpose of a river weir or for fishing; but, on the other hand, instead
of running with the axis of the river, as would appear reasonable if
they were meant to obstruct the passage of men, they were planted
across it like a weir. They have afforded matter for endless
discussion among antiquaries.
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com