New Beta Theta Pi House

NEW BETA THETA PI HOUSE

It Represents Investment of Over $32,000.

A QUARTER MILLION

Of dollars Has Been Put In Fraternity Houses in Ann Arbor by the Alumni.

The February number of the Beta Theta Pi, of New York City, contains as its leading article a well written description of the University of Michigan from the pen of Junius E. Beal. It is illustrated with many full page cuts of the University. The frontispiece is the handsome new Beta Theta Pi Chapter House now nearing completion. The University paper, Mr. Beal has written the following description of the new chapter house:

In 1891 the Alumni Club of Michigan chapter purchased the home of Professor Henry V. Rogers, who had been called to the presidency of Northwestern. They paid $10,000 for the house and land, a corner lot being 100 feet by 148. Of that amount they had on hand all but $9,000, which sum was borrowed. It took ten years to pay that off, whereupon, to keep up with their neighbors, other fraternities, who were erecting fine houses, it became necessary to have a larger and better house.

The Board, wishing to avoid the conventional club-house style, desired something which might be in a measure typical of a Greek-letter society. Therefore they adopted that faithful Greek architecture which has often been tried and never denied--that type to which all nations revert after tiring of Queen Anne, "Mary Ann," or Renaissance--for its solidity, dignity and beauty are restful to the beholder.

Architects D'Oench & Yost, of New York city, were chosen, the former a well known Beta of the Washington University chapter. That beautiful glacial granite found on the top of the ground in this locality forms the foundation up to the first-story windows, where light-colored pressed brick carry up the walls to the heavy cornices and roofs. Plate glass windows light the interior by day and electricity by night, there being a complete system of switches for close control. Maple floors, and halls and stairs of oak, will try to last for many years, while hard fishback plaster will resist punching.

The large front porch opens to a lobby, and that to the hall in the center of the building. This is open to the top of the second story, affording a gallery about its sides which leads to the living-rooms of the second story. The stairway divides at a landing. The dining-room is 15 feet by 29 feet 8 inches, and can be made 15 feet longer by opening the folding doors to the reception-room. The library, in a quiet corner looking out on the street, has a fireplace. The kitchen, and also the rooms for matron and help are in the rear and separated from the rest of the house, having their own stairs, bath-rooms, lavatories, sitting-room and sleeping-rooms.

The third floor has study and sleeping rooms, lavatories and the chapter hall. This has its ceiling 16 feet in the clear, being 24 feet 6 inches by 30 feet. As the two ante-rooms are one story high, a gallery is above them looking down into the chapter hall.

The building can accommodate 24 students if necessary. it has a steam-heating plant, laundry and coal-room, also rooms for billiards, gymnasium or other purposes in the basement.

Its location is on State street, within half a block of the Varsity campus, and has, for its nearest neighbors, the Alpha Delta Phi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Psi Upsilon, Sigma Chi, Zeta Psi and Phi Delta Phi chapter-houses. Th new athletic field is on the same street one-quarter mile to the south.

Over $250,000 has boon put into a dozen fraternity houses in Ann arbor, many of these buildings being very imposing structures. They have been erected by the alumni in small subscriptions, and by the undergraduates making pledges for annual payment and the city banks underwrite their bonds, and sell them out to their customers, usually on a 5 per cent basis.

This Beta property will represent over $32,000; and it will stand as a monument to the energy of Judge John H. Grant, '82, of Manistee, who has written hundreds of personal letters; traveled out many mileage books; coaxed, cajoled and guyed; bluffed, bull-dozed and jollied, to shake the shekels out of the pockets of some whose fraternal hearts the activities of life had hardened. The boys of the active chapter during the past two years have raised $1,500 by personal sacrifices, the most of it made off the boarding-table. Such loyalty deserves a good house and it is coming to them.

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An editorial in the magazine says:

"The members of that chapter have done an immense amount of hard work to secure this house. It is a beautiful house and the fraternity is proud of it. Our fraternity was the first one to establish a chapter in the University of Michigan, and the chapter has a long line of distinguished alumni. Bro. Beal might have added to his article upon his university and chapter that much of the success of the chapter-house project was due to his own shrewd and untiring efforts."