North by Northwestern

When debating the implications of the “brothel law,” students often make the argument that enforcing the law would toss the state of Northwestern housing back to—well, no one’s really sure. We’re also never really sure how many students live on- or off-campus, and how that number has changed. North by Northwestern continues with this Housing Explainer what it began with its ASG Explainer: we’ve taken a perennial University issue, put it in context and found information you can always reference. Northwestern’s housing system still may not be “one of the best college housing systems in the country,” as Northwestern’s business manager William Dyche claimed it was nearly a hundred years ago, but it has come a long way from a couple rooms in an attic.

Students have lived off-campus in Evanston and Chicago since Northwestern was founded.

More students now live on campus than ever before, although the percentage of total students living on campus has fallen in the past decade. A historically low percentage of students live in Greek housing today, a smaller set than ever has since the late 1960s, although that trend has slightly reversed in the past two years. Here's an explanation of where the data comes from.

The Northwestern University opened for classes on November 5, 1855. The first Northwestern students, ten men, were mostly from the Evanston area, though some commuted in from Chicago every day, a substantial commute considering “L” service didn’t begin in Evanston until 1908.

At the beginning of the University’s existence there were few options in terms of student housing; students primarily lived with families or in boarding houses. If they were from the immediate area, many students choose to live with their own families, a practice which continued well into the twentieth century. Students who had to find housing with boarders often had to look far beyond Lake or Ridge, and it wasn't uncommon for freshmen to live in Rogers Park.

The sole form of on-campus housing was in the attic of the University’s only building, a hastily constructed wooden schoolhouse on the current site of the Davis Street Fishmarket, which came to be known as Old College. The entire University was in Old College, and a boarder would likely end up sleeping right above the lecture hall he would attend in the morning.

By 1860, Northwestern was on the rise, attracting students from all over the midwest, and Evanston had become a thriving metropolis of 831 people. Northwestern’s administration boasted that they would “insure students would be placed a distance from temptation.” Despite this promise, University officials did little to control student housing, as there no need when there was little separation between the town and the gown.

The University was finally forced to make a student housing decision when a number of students came down with smallpox in 1863. In a move echoed by the H1N1 decision over a hundred years later, the University set up a quarantine in a hotel.

At the same time that smallpox had made its way into Evanston, so had another form of student housing. Fraternities first began to appear at Northwestern during the 1860s. Phi Kappa Psi came first in 1864, followed by Sigma Chi in 1869. (Phi Delta Theta had a short lived stay in 1859, but the entire chapter left Northwestern to fight for the Union in the Civil War.) The men’s quadrangles had yet to be constructed, so fraternities instead bought luxurious houses off campus in Evanston. This marks the first time three or more unrelated lived together off campus in a formal capacity.

Perhaps in response to the popularity of fraternities, the University purchased its first on campus residence, Dempster Hall, from Garrett in 1868, but the building was basically a simple boarding house, and not a dormitory in the modern sense.

As men’s housing had finally seemingly been figured out, a new challenge emerged for the University in the form of housing for women. Northwestern began to admit women in 1869, and despite the high moral character of “Heavenston,” it was simply unthinkable for women to board by themselves in town. As a result, Northwestern’s first women’s residence opened in 1874: the Women’s College or Willard Hall, now known as the Music Administration Building.

Willard Hall was notable not only for being the first women’s residence, but also for having the precursor to the community assistant in the form of Frances Willard herself. However, the strictness by which the women living in Willard Hall were controlled would make today’s CA’s look like fraternity brothers. Women living in the Hall could not leave without escorts and were required to report all of their activities to Willard each week for approval.

Otherwise, the Women’s College did not really resemble one of today’s college dorms. Many of the roots of the modern dormitory came in the form of the YMCA Association House. The YMCA and YWCA Organizations at NU were extremely popular around the turn of the century; in 1895, 30 percent of the student body was involved. The YMCA house, which was built in 1900 on Orrington Avenue, was the first real student common at Northwestern.

Around the same time, sororities and fraternities had become a major part of student life, and in 1895 the trustees of the University set aside land for chapter houses on the north and south ends of campus. With the building of two more women’s dormitories, including Chapin Hall in 1901, many Northwestern men who continued to live in boarding houses off campus worried the University was becoming “a girl’s school.”

As a result, steps were finally taken to build a men’s housing quadrangle, including chapter houses and dormitories. The buildings were considered almost luxury accommodations, with every house having oak paneling and its own piano and victrola. When north quadrangle buildings opened in 1914, the available rooms were snatched up immediately, and the North Campus/South Campus divide that persists today was officially established.

The University men couldn’t enjoy the dorms for long, however, since the start of the first World War meant that all the dorms and fraternity houses were converted to barracks for the training of student soldiers. Over 1,000 undergrads joined the Army, and many left campus.

At the end of World War I, the planned sorority quad was completed, including sorority chapter houses and a pair of dorms, Rogers House and Hobart House. Willard Hall was also rebuilt in 1938 in its modern location to serve as a dormitory for unaffiliated, mostly freshmen women and became Northwestern’s first storied “virgin vault,” even inspiring Donald Robertson, the composer of “Rise Northwestern,” (and arch-rival/classmate of “Go U Northwestern” composer Theodore Van Etten) to write a song about it entitled “Mr. Willard Hall.”

This happy interwar passed uneventfully with Northwestern, and with the beginning of World War II, the University became a major force in the training of Naval officers. As the “Annapolis of the Midwest,” NU trained around 42,000 people for military service, requiring almost all of the school’s housing to be dedicated to the military, including all of the men’s dormitories and fraternities, Shanley Hall, and downtown's Abbott Hall, once considered “the tallest building in the world used exclusively for student housing.” 

After the war, returning soldiers swamped Northwestern’s housing system. There wasn't enough housing on- or off-campus at NU, so temporary housing had to be set up all over campus. Nine “villages” of quonset huts were set up, including one on Deering Meadow and one outside Dyche Stadium (now known as Ryan Field). The Northwestern Apartments on Orrington, designed to be just for faculty and grad students, were also opened up to undergrads, and remained that way through the 1980s.

Since many students had to live with families to find housing after the war, it became particularly difficult for Northwestern’s slightly less than twenty black students to find housing. NU had no housing options for black men, who were mostly athletes, and as a result they were forced to live far off campus with black families or commute from the South Side. Black women were allowed to live in the International House, a desegregated dorm where the women lived with foreign students. The house was so controversial that the University refused to officially acknowledge its existence.

This marked the beginning of the Northwestern housing revolution. In 1949, J. Roscoe Miller became president of Northwestern and soon after implemented his “Long Range Plan of 1955.” The most important part of the plan was the creation of the lakefill, which has insured that there has been space for new dorms up to today. (Slivka Hall was constructed in 2002.)

In terms of housing, though, building dorms was the least of Miller’s worries.

On May 3, 1968, approximately 100 black students staged a sit in at the Bursar’s Office on Clark Street. The sit-in ended late the next day without incident, and after an emergency faculty senate meeting, a response to the student’s demands was made. Despite heavy opposition, Miller agreed that, among other things, there would be housing made available for black students.

Soon after this, the remaining parietal rules (visiting hours for men and curfews for women) were struck down after student protests, and then in 1972, the first residential colleges were opened. Housing was almost at its modern state; indeed, this is where the university begins to keep housing data. However, as more students moved off campus, one more important battle was being fought.

The members of the Amazingrace Collective, a student group which operated a coffeehouse on campus and brought numerous famous musical acts to campus, all lived together in a house on Colfax Street. At the same time that Amazingrace was being cited for running an illicit cafe on campus, the City of Evanston decided to invoke the infamous “brothel law.” The twelve Amazingrace members were cited for living together in a house not zoned for more than three unrelated people, but they refused to disperse and instead recruited a lawyer from the ACLU to fight the order and argue for a broader definition of family.

Around the same time that Amazingrace was to fight their case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state of New York, and supported a similar housing ordinance. One last hope was found in an exception to the “three-unrelated” rule that the City of Evanston had made for a religious commune, but the zoning board ruled in August of 1974 that the Reba Place Commune was excepted as they had one married couple living in their residence. Amazingrace, lacking a married couple, was evicted shortly after the decision.

Today, Northwestern students have more housing choices than students in the 1800s could have ever imagined. More students live on-campus than ever have before, and only a few students still follow in the footsteps of the first enrollees by commuting.

On campus, students can live in a traditional residence hall (a “dorm”), in the traditional living-learning environment of a residential college, or in the new successor to the residential college, the residential community. Many also choose to live in a fraternity or sorority houses. Off campus, students can live in apartments or share houses, irrespective of the brothel law forgotten until last year. And it looks to grow: with its all but stated intent to renovate or demolish Peanut Row, the university seems to intend to expand on-campus, university housing options over the next decade.

This housing history explainer will continue to be updated. Robinson Meyer and Matthew Zellner contributed reporting.