Nobles’ very own Frat house sits between Baker and the Castle, passed daily by Nobles students on their way to the Castle and the MAC. However, it is not a traditional Frat house as you might see at colleges across the country. It was built 100 years ago in 1925 and has experienced many eras of Nobles history throughout its lifespan. Today, the Frat house serves as faculty housing for families with three multi-floor units, but it has played many different roles over the past century.
According to Archivist and Librarian Heidi Charles, the house was built in 1925 to serve as a dormitory for younger students. It was first known as the “short” dormitory, with the long dormitory being on the top floor of the Castle. That dormitory was called “Mr. Terry’s house,” after dormitory parent Lawrence Terry. The Frat nickname was given by the boys living in the “short” dormitory, but it is not exactly clear when it originated. Charles said, “In 1938, Mr. Vernon Greene became the dormitory parent, and sometime in that era, the nickname for the house became the Frat.” However, it is clear that the nickname caught on quickly, and the road off Campus Drive from Baker to the Frat parking lot was named Fraternity Row in the 1990s, according to Director of Building and Grounds Mike McHugh.
An addition was built onto the Frat in 1959 to allow for a faculty family living space in addition to the dormitory space. In the 1960s, there was a progression of Nobles faculty families starting out in the Frat, then living in the Castle, and eventually, a house. This rotation included the storied and very impactful Flood and Harrington families. “The Frat was the starter apartment. You lived there when you first came to Nobles, and then you would move to the big apartment in the Castle, and then you would move to a house. That happened three times where it was a revolving door of people going into the next apartment or house,” Charles said. After 26 years of serving as a space for both students and faculty, in 1985, the Frat was renovated and turned into a faculty-only building. The boarding students moved into the Castle until the Wiggins Dormitory was built in 2005.
The Frat has served as faculty housing for the past 40 years and now has three self-contained three-floor units, meant for families with a larger space and multiple bedrooms. Mathematics Faculty Anna Dolan lived in the Frat for two years before recently moving to the Castle. She listed many benefits of the Frat, including having a bigger space compared to the Castle, having an assigned parking spot, getting to say she lived on Fraternity Row, and hosting faculty members to socialize after events. Dolan’s only negative was having to share a unit, but she looks back on her days in the Frat fondly. “Living on campus can be a really good thing, [with a] very easy commute. It’s nice to have a community, and nice to have dinner here often. And I really enjoy working with the kids in the dorm, so [there’s] been a ton of positives,” Dolan said.
Beyond the tangible housing benefits, the Frat also offers a tight-knit community for families with the shared experiences of raising young children and working at Nobles, typically as younger faculty members. The strong community is evident today with the families of Director of Marketing and Communications Tiffany Truong, Computer Science Department Chair Max Montgomery (N ’14), and Assistant Director of Buildings and Grounds Dylan Satter. Truong is in her second year living in the Frat. She said, “I feel so privileged to live on campus. It’s been such a wonderful community for my family.[…]Prior to moving back to Nobles last year, I lived in San Diego for about nine and a half years. So being on campus has allowed me to immerse myself in the community and just get to know the families and the people who live and work here better.”
“…Being on campus has allowed me to immerse myself in the community and just get to know the families and the people who live and work here better.”
The Frat’s convenient location among academic buildings and quirky layout made administrators consider repurposing it many times over the 15 years McHugh has been at Nobles, although the family housing aspect is very beneficial for Nobles to attract and retain faculty. “It’s definitely a unique building, in that we’ve been threatening to tear it down since I’ve been here to build something different or extend Baker. So it’s sort of been this ugly stepchild thing that we can’t give up because it’s good housing. It’s got multiple bedrooms in each unit, and that’s something that we lack. We have the Castle, which has 17 units, but most of them are either studios or one-bedrooms,” he said. While our Frat house is not quite a house for rowdy college boys, it has similarly brought students and faculty together and provided valuable housing over its first 100 years.