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| Butler Dorm, c1915 (photo courtesy of Kyle Kingen) |
Throughout its tenure from 1875 until 1928, Butler University only hosted one dormitory for students. Located in the northern part of the campus, the dormitory was completed in August of 1882. College officials awarded the architectural contract to brothers, Allen and John Stem. While both men went on to distinguished careers, the dorm at Butler would not be one of their better projects. It did not help that a tornado struck the area in the summer of 1882 felling many trees and damaging part of the building still under construction.
Butler historian George Waller recorded that the structure was poorly-built. Originally, men lived on one side of the building while women lived on the other side with a wall separating the sexes. Waller noted that holes appeared in that wall. Campus officials then decreed that only men would live in the building, but completely reversed course by the early twentieth century and made it the women's residence.
In the 1890s students rented the upper rooms for thirty cents a week while the lower floors leased for fifty cents a week. Students were expected to keep their rooms clean or to hire someone to clean it. Waller noted that the college furnished each room with a "bed, mattress, stove, table, chairs, and a washstand." University officials also provided a "dorm cow" who was not to be "surreptitiously milked." By the 1910s those same rooms rented between $3.75 and $4.00 a week.
Despite growing enrollments and the arrival of the Christian Women's Board of Missions, the campus did not provide another dorm. Young men and some young women found rooms in nearby boarding houses or in fraternities or sororities. After the college pulled out of Irvington most of the campus buildings fell into disrepair. The dorm, which never had a name, was demolished in the 1930s.
Sources:
George "Mac" Waller, Butler University: A Sesquicentennial History, Indiana University Press, 2006, pp. 158-159; Stem Brothers: Tornado--"Other Disasters, Indianapolis News, June 26, 1882, p. 4; Construction--"City News, Indianapolis News, August 26, 1882, p. 3; "City News," Indianapolis News, August 28, 1882, p. 1.
