The Society Houses

For a look at the origins of the local societies, see The Local Societies and the Union Literary Society House.

As the twentieth century dawned, the two chapters of national fraternities that had been established at the Michigan Agricultural College in the 1870s were no longer active. The Iota chapter of Delta Tau Delta disbanded in 1897 “owing to poor choice of new members” (according to Beal, who does not elaborate and inaccurately states the year as 1891) and would not return until 1947.^† The Michigan Beta chapter of Phi Delta Theta, de-chartered in 1898 “owing to the judgment of the grand chapter that no chapter should be connected with a college not giving a classical education,” reorganized as a local society called Phi Delta.¹

Meanwhile the local societies were going strong. In 1900 at M.A.C. there were seven men’s societies (Union Literary, Eclectic, Olympic, Hesperian, Columbian, Phi Delta, and Adelphic) and two women’s societies (Feronian and Themian). The men held weekly meetings in rooms provided by the College in the attics and basements of Williams Hall and Wells Hall (except for Union Lit, which had its own hall). The women did the same in the newly built Women’s Building.

At the same time, the College saw its overall enrollment enter a period of significant growth—compounding by an average of more than ten percent each year over the next two decades. In the first ten years alone, the number of local societies doubled. Unfortunately M.A.C. lacked dormitory space to accommodate the expanding roster of students, which “forced an increasing majority of the men to live off the campus.” The men’s societies, having already begun to evolve into fraternities as they focused on their social aspects and “surrendered their scholarly leadership to other more specialized groups,” took the next logical step and established residential houses for themselves.²

This resulted in an aspect of East Lansing’s early development that is mostly lost and forgotten today: that along with faculty housing, and rental housing for students in general, dozens of society houses were built which often were among the most substantial, dramatic, and impressive residences in the young city.

The first group to move off campus was the Hesperian Society in 1905. Having lost its meeting room and most of its members’ dormitory rooms in the Wells Hall fire, the society rented the Hagadorn house on the northwest corner of Grand River Avenue at Evergreen Avenue. Two years later, Phi Delta rented a house “on the North Abbot Road,” likely the Towar house, and the Eclectic Society moved into a newly built house on Evergreen Avenue. Located on a one-and-a-quarter-acre double lot on the southwest corner at Oakhill Avenue that the society had purchased in 1904, Eclectic was the first society to own its own house off campus.³

During its fourth year of renting the Hagadorn house, in early 1909 Hesperian applied for permission to build a society house on the campus, for both residential and meeting purposes. The matter was referred to Board of Agriculture president Robert D. Graham to investigate and report. To gather input, Graham sent a letter of inquiry to “all the living alumni whose addresses are known except for the five last classes.” Graham’s reasoning for the exception was that “recent graduates change their addresses so frequently that it was felt inadvisable to try to reach them at this time,” yet it also conveniently avoided input from the alumni with the most current understanding of campus life.⁴

The letter described ten literary societies for men which “might very properly be called local fraternities,” at a time when the College had only nine suites available for meetings in Williams Hall and the second Wells Hall.

Two societies have built houses—one [Union Lit] on the campus, which is used for social and literary purposes only—the other [Eclectic] off the campus, which is used as a home for its members, providing living rooms and boarding facilities. It is in all respects a modern fraternity house. At least three or four other societies are anxious to build.

Minutes, 28 Apr 1909, pp. 16–17.

The letter went on to echo an argument made by College President Jonathan L. Snyder in his most recent annual report to the Board, in which he noted that the houses’ high cost of rent and general lack of boarding accommodations “must of necessity draw to them the students that have money,” that “students of limited means will live in the dormitories, but the fraternity houses will set the social standard,” and “the fellow not connected with a fraternity house will have practically no standing socially.” This would undermine the social equality and “democratic spirit of the campus” that, according to Snyder, had been one of the College’s strengths ever since its founding.⁵

Graham asked M.A.C. alumni to respond with their opinions, and of the 700 letters that were sent, some 278 replied. Unsurprisingly, given the selection bias toward older alumni, between eighty and ninety percent of respondents agreed with President Snyder and the Board. On April 28, 1909, the Board passed a resolution declaring its intent “to foster the dormitory system of housing students, and efforts will be made to increase as rapidly as possible dormitory accommodations, eating halls, and quarters for social purposes.” They left Eclectic alone, since that society had received prior permission to build its house, but stated “the other societies living off the grounds in rented quarters shall be expected to occupy again rooms on the campus when such rooms are properly provided.”⁶

As a result, Hesperian’s request to build a house on campus was refused. Yet dormitory accommodations remained scarce, so in 1911 Hesperian took matters into their own hands and bought the Woodbury house with the intent of moving across Evergreen Avenue from the rented Hagadorn house. In response the Board resolved:

That we consider the action of the Hesperian Society in purchasing a society house for living purposes outside the grounds of the Michigan Agricultural College as a violation of the foregoing [1909] resolution, and said society is warned against continuing its aforesaid project, and is hereby notified that if it proceeds with the same, it must abandon said house whenever rooms on the campus are provided, or whenever ordered to do so by this board.

Minutes, 16 Aug 1911, pp. 88–89.

Despite the stern tone of its ultimatum, the Board did not have a leg to stand on—their objective “would have required biennial appropriations for new dormitories, and these Snyder, Secretary Brown, and the Board found unobtainable.” For all their talk of fostering the dormitory system, no new men’s dormitories were built until Mason and Abbot Halls in the late 1930s. The Board never made a move against Hesperian, and just a year later (1912) the Phi Delta Society bought the Arthur Bird house and the Olympic Society bought the William Holdsworth house. The fraternity house boom had begun.⁷

The houses of 1915

By 1915, the year that Union Lit asked to expand its campus hall to convert it to a residence, and the Delphic Society petitioned to build a residential house on campus as well—and both were rejected by the Board—a total of eight local societies owned or rented houses in East Lansing. Thanks to the Wolverine yearbook of 1915, we have photographs of all of them. This list is ordered by build date, and gives both their original address numbers and their post-1920 renumberings.⁸

Olympic House

The Olympic Society house is a good place to start and discuss briefly the gambrel roof, colloquially known as a “barn roof” due to its frequent use in that role. It appears to have been a very popular form in East Lansing between 1900 and 1930, particularly among society houses. The gambrel roof offers an advantage over the ordinary gable roof in terms of additional interior space without significant additional structure. This is a wild surmise, but perhaps the Agricultural College attracted many people with prior knowledge of this advantage—i.e., Aggies knew about barns, and so put barn roofs on their houses too.

This house was “among the first” in the Oakwood subdivision, built circa 1899–1900 for the family of Professor William S. Holdsworth Jr (1856–1907, M.A.C. ’78, M.S. ’90). It was very similar in many ways (if on a somewhat smaller scale) to the Eclectic house built a few years later: each had a gambrel roof, smaller cross-gambrel centered on the front entrance, and additional dormers front and rear. Its full-width porch faced Abbot Avenue. William Holdsworth was Professor of Drawing and Design who started as an Instructor in 1881. Among his many accomplishments, he designed the first addition to the Chemistry Laboratory. After he died in 1907, his wife and family remained in the house until their eldest son, Robert (M.A.C. ’11) completed his studies. Mrs. Holdsworth sold the house to the Olympic Society in 1912, which resided there for the next two decades. In 1933 Olympic sold the house and merged into the Eunomian Society, which a year later joined Sigma Nu. The East Lansing Post Office replaced the house in 1933; today that building is itself threatened by redevelopment.⁹

Hesperian House

This Landmark Structure, designed by Darius Moon and built 1903 for Chester Woodbury, having since moved twice, stands proudly on M.A.C. Avenue today. See: Woodbury house.

As previously mentioned, Hesperian purchased the house in 1911. They sold it in 1926 and used the proceeds to build a new house at 810 W. Grand River Avenue. They were the last local society at Michigan State, joining Psi Upsilon in 1943. The Psi Upsilon house is now listed among the Fraternity–Sorority Thematic Historic District.

Phi Delta House

The house built circa 1903 for Arthur Cranston Bird (1864–1910, M.A.C. ’83, M.Agr. ’94, Secretary of the Board 1899–1902) stood as one of the prominent showcase homes of Oakwood alongside those of fellow developers Hagadorn and Woodbury. It was built on the former site of Robert Burcham’s second log cabin and was designed in American Queen Anne style, elements of which include its asymmetrical planform, variegated clapboard details, prominent front gable lit by a Venetian window, corner tower with conical roof, and the broad, covered porch that wrapped around two sides of the house.

The Phi Delta Society first moved off campus in autumn 1907, when they rented a house from Jennie Towar Whitmore (M.A.C. ’86, one of the Twenty-One) believed to be the Towar house at 507 Abbot Avenue. In 1912 they purchased the Bird house from his estate. Phi Delta rechartered with the national Phi Delta Theta in 1931 and moved to their new-built house at 626 Cowley Avenue the following year. The Bird house became the home of the Ero Alphian Society (which soon joined Alpha Xi Delta sorority). In later years it was known as “College House” and used by Christian student organizations until its demolition in July 1965 for the expansion of Peoples Church.¹⁰

Eclectic House

Eclectic was one of the earliest societies, the first local to organize after the Union Literary Society. In 1904 “the ’Tics” bought two lots on the southwest corner of Evergreen at Oakhill Avenue, in the Oakwood subdivision. At the time Oakwood was a popular subdivision, and the society was fortunate to acquire such a choice site, dramatically situated on a knoll overlooking the valley. They completed their house in 1907, “at that time the first modern fraternity house in East Lansing,” and it was a grand example of that era’s collegiate society houses: a big gambrel roof to provide more interior quarters without excess height; a broad, wraparound porch; rusticated brick veneer; and a distinctively tall and narrow gambrel atop a bump-out for the south elevation’s main entrance giving it a vaguely gothic air.¹¹

Eclectic was installed into Alpha Tau Omega in 1940, reducing the number of remaining locals at that time to two. In 1959, ATO completed a major remodeling of the house, increasing its capacity from thirty-three to fifty-seven men. This added a neo-Grecian “terrace entrance” to the north elevation and a gable-roofed brick addition to the west. Typical of the era, the tall, square columns of the new entrance were somehow both imposing and plain. (See the Hagadorn house for another example.) “It was demolished in 1973, with the loss of some human history and architectural history of East Lansing.”¹²

Aurorean House

This house was built in 1908 by Frank and Frances Hewitt, who also owned a 160-acre farm near Okemos. It was the first home of the Delta Club, a room-and-board organization of junior faculty, who lived here 1910–14. It has been home to many local societies and fraternities including:

• Aurorean (1914–19)
• Forensic (1919–28), installed with Lambda Chi Alpha in 1922
• Ulyssian (1928–40), installed with Theta Kappa Nu in 1930
• Phi Chi Alpha (1941–42)
• Zeta Beta Tau (mid-1950s)
• Phi Gamma Delta (1959–68)
• Pi Lambda Phi (late-1980s)
• Alpha Sigma Phi (in 2017)
• Tau Kappa Epsilon (in 2019).¹³

As of 2024 it is one hundred sixteen years old and is a large example of the organic shingle style—which was quite typical of East Lansing houses in its day and now is extremely rare. The house survived fires in 1923 and 1930. Many of its original external elements are intact, including the variegated shingles in the gables and a funky little second-floor bump-out above the porch that is now unfortunately overwhelmed by the necessity of a fire escape on the front elevation. The front porch appears to have been rebuilt (the original stone piers are gone) but retains its full width and homey charm. Why this house and its next-door neighbor 404 Michigan Avenue, which has a similar history and style, were not considered for the Fraternity–Sorority Thematic Historic District is unknown to this author.¹⁴

Phylean House

This Landmark house stood on Grand River Avenue just east of the original Peoples Church, about midway between Abbot Road and M.A.C. Avenue. Built 1909 for Dr. Chalmers Dickson, by 1912 it was named “The Hilands” and used as apartments for junior faculty. Phylean lived here from 1913 to 1915.

For more of this house’s history, see the Dickson house.

Athenaeum House

The Hewitts (who had previously built on Michigan Avenue; see Aurorean House, above) expanded their rooming house development to Grand River Avenue with this house, and the Athenaeum Society appear to have moved in soon after it was completed in September 1914. This was one of four big houses on Grand River Avenue between M.A.C. Avenue and Charles Street; the other three were rentals as well, and at least two of those also served as society houses over the years. Athenaeum’s house was a three-story cross-gambreled beast with thirty-seven rooms.¹⁵

After Athenaeum merged into the Ae-Theon Society circa 1919, several other fraternities lived here, among them Aurorean/Delta Sigma Pi (1919–24), Alpha Gamma Rho (1925–c.1944), Phi Mu Tau (1945), and Delta Tau Delta (its first home when it re-chartered in 1947). It sheltered Hedrick House after that co-op’s January 1954 fire, until Hedrick completed its current house on Haslett Street (now renamed as Collingwood Drive) in 1956. The last of the four houses remaining on its block, 335 East Grand River was demolished for a parking lot in June 1956; today’s existing commercial block was built in 1970.¹⁶

Columbian House

The Columbian Society built in 1914, around the same time as Athenaeum or soon after, and in a very similar style. As it was built for the society itself, this might have been the second purpose-built fraternity house (after Eclectic). The three-story gambrel-roofed house was imposing, at least in photos, with a solid red-brick base capped with bands of stone, attic windows making it appear even taller than it was, and a bold double-decker porch facing south. At first it did not have a numbered address on Bogue Street, then it was briefly addressed as 137 Bogue, later to become 131 Bogue. Columbian, which joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 1927, remained in this house for as long as it stood. The current building at 131 Bogue Street, erected by SAE in 1954, is L-shaped because it was constructed around the footprint of the original Columbian house while the latter was still occupied. Once the new house was complete, the old one was demolished to provide a front yard.¹⁷

Afterward

These eight houses are good examples of the types of large, substantial edifices that sprung up in East Lansing to shelter the societies. Although two are now listed as Landmark Structures, they were included on that list for reasons other than having been society houses. The rest have been lost or ignored, much like the dozens of other society houses that followed them.

Williams Hall burned in 1919 and women moved back into Abbot Hall in 1920, leaving second Wells Hall as the only dormitory for men. With M.A.C. lacking appropriations to build new dormitories, the only housing option for the majority of male students was off campus, a choice that included a growing number of society houses. Barely a decade after Graham’s and Snyder’s reports, the fraternities had won.

By 1920 there were sixteen men’s and six women’s local societies. In December that year the Board of Agriculture changed its stance and declared “no objection to the introduction of national fraternities at M.A.C.”^††† Four months later it did the same for national sororities. In 1923 the Board granted permission for sororities to occupy off-campus residences, albeit with numerous rules and restrictions and each house required to have a live-in matron appointed by the College. That fall, seven of eight sororities made the move; the eighth would follow a year later.¹⁸

These actions by the Board opened a floodgate of pent-up demand. Over the next ten years, five fraternities and five sororities established new chapters at Michigan State. At the same time, the local societies started to “go national” via installation as chapters of national organizations. By 1940, all but two of the local societies had gone national. The Phi Chi Alpha Society, a late addition to the locals that was sponsored by the Y.M.C.A. and organized in 1926, joined Sigma Chi in 1942. The last local holdout was Hesperian, the very first society to move off campus and the first to oppose the Board and (what turned out to be) its dormitory pipe dream. The Hesperian Society joined Psi Upsilon in 1943.¹⁹

1. The Rainbow, 20(3), Mar 1897, pp. 178–179; 70(2), Feb 1947, p. 65. Beal, p. 211. ↩︎
2. Kuhn, pp. 249, 251. ↩︎
3. Beal, p. 207. MAC Record, 12(38), 11 Jun 1907, p. 3. LCD (1910), p. 480. ↩︎
4. Minutes, 24 Feb 1909, p. 5. ↩︎
5. Minutes, 28 Apr 1909, pp. 16–18. 47th AR (1908), pp. 33–36. ↩︎
6. Minutes, 28 Apr 1909, pp. 16–18. ↩︎
7. Kuhn, p. 252. Beal, p. 211. ↩︎
8. Minutes, 19 May 1915, p. 202. ↩︎
9. Towar, p. 46. MSC Record, 38(6), Feb 1933, p. 5. ↩︎
10. Beal, p. 207. MAC Record, 12(38), 11 Jun 1907, p. 3. LCD (1910), p. 480. LSJ, 25 Jul 1965, p. 14. ↩︎
11. ELHC Final Report (2008), pp. 6–7, erroneously attributing the purchase to Hesperian, not Eclectic. ↩︎
12. MSC Record, 46(1), Oct 1940, p. 5. Wolverine (1960), p. 331. ELHC Final Report (2008), p. 6. ↩︎
13. Chadwick, p 1. LCD (1921), p. 396, et al. MAC Record 16(2), 27 Sep 1910, p. 2; 24(33), 20 Jun 1919, p. 3. ↩︎
14. 62nd AR (1923), p. 80. LSJ, 10 Apr 1930, p. 1. ↩︎
15. Sanborn (1913), p. 105. LSJ, 17 Sep 1914, p. 2. ↩︎
16. LCD (1919), p. 200, et al. Rainbow, 70(2), Feb 1947, pp. 65–69. LSJ, 15 Feb 1956, p. 16; 24 Jun 1956, p. 69. ↩︎
17. ELHC Final Report (2008), p. 12. ↩︎
18. Minutes, 8 Dec 1920, p. 489; 20 Apr 1921, p. 495; 18 Jul 1923, p. 573. LSJ, 22 Sep 1923, p. 9. MAC Record, 30(3), 6 Oct 1924, p. 41. ↩︎
19. MSC Record, 31(16), 25 Jan 1926, p. 263. ↩︎

1. † The national Delta Tau Delta Rainbow magazine was similarly reticent about the chapter’s demise in 1897: “It is not needful to recount the events that brought about this result. The different chapters will be duly informed of the facts through the proper channels. Suffice it to write that Iota is defunct.” [The Rainbow, 20(3), Mar 1897, pp. 178–179]↩︎
2. †† This view, from the north, highlights the new addition and helps to obscure the fact that it is the same house as in the preceding image. The dark patches on the roof reveal that a shed dormer replaced a gambrel that matched the one on the south elevation.↩︎
3. ††† Many sources contend that the Board of Agriculture enacted a ban on “national Greek-letter societies” in the late 1890s, but this author has found nothing on the subject within the Minutes of the Board. The decision might have been made by a faculty committee instead. In any case it is certain that no national organizations operated on campus after the de-chartering of Phi Delta Theta in 1898 until the installation of Chi chapter, Alpha Gamma Delta sorority, on 1 Oct 1921.↩︎