Table of Contents
Boarding Houses
Built in 1867 and 1868.
They were located approximately where Flint or Stockbridge Hall now sit. Listed in 1869 through early 1870s reports as South and North boarding houses.
South boarding house
The boarding house was built in the summer of 1867 and was a wooden building with a mansard roof and a one story ell on the back. It included accommodations for a family to manage the building and had a dining-room 50 x 18 feet. The students were charged for board in the 1860s at $3 per week. The cost of this building, including furniture, grading, and supplying with water, was $8,180.
By the late 1870s the house is listed as being the home of Prof. William B. Graves (physics and engineering) and continues to be listed as the Graves house long after Prof. Graves left the college. It is unclear if it continued to also house students. In the 1880s and 1890s it was the home of Rev. Charles C. Walker and may have been known as Walker's Hall around 1910 with boarders. This building seems to have been demolished around 1911-12.
North boarding house
In 1868 a new boarding house was built just to the north of the original boarding house and was a simple vernacular farm house style with a number of ells.. It was variously known as the boarding house, old dining hall, and hash house. From the Jan. 1869 annual report: “The new boarding-house is a large, plain structure of wood, which cost, with the furniture for the kitchens and dining rooms, about $8,000. The present building affords ample accommodations for a family and one hundred table boarders, and is so planned that its capacity can be doubled at a small expense by adding another dining room north of the kitchen.” For at least a portion of the time, the boarding houses seems to have been run independently, but with the college providing free rent of the building to the managers in exchange for very inexpensive prices for students. In 1885 the boarding house was remodeled, repaired and painted.
By 1900 this building was declared in poor condition and president began asking the legislature for funds for a new boarding house. Draper Hall would be built in 1903 as the new dining hall and boarding house for women. With that, the old boarding house was demolished.
