List of MIT undergraduate dormitories
Encyclopedia
This article describes the undergraduate dorms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, with a focus on student culture and dormitory life (including meal options). All undergrad MIT dorms are officially coed, and reserved for unmarried students, except McCormick Hall, which remains women-only. Because living conditions are strongly affected by architecture, there is coverage of that topic here. For a more esthetic architectural focus, see the article Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
.
Baker House, located at 362 Memorial Drive, is a co-ed dormitory at MIT designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto
in 1947—1948 and built in 1949. Its distinctive design has an undulating shape which allows most rooms a view of the Charles River
, and gives many of the rooms a wedge-shaped layout. The dining hall features a "moon garden" roof that is also very distinctive. Aalto also designed furniture for the rooms. Baker House was renovated for its fiftieth anniversary, modernizing the plumbing, telecommunications, and electrical systems and removing some of the interior changes made over the years that were not in Aalto's original design.
The dorm was named after Everett Moore Baker, an MIT Dean of Students, who died in a plane crash in India in 1949. The dormitory houses 318 undergraduates in single, double, triple and quadruple rooms. Baker's dining halls are open to all MIT students Sunday through Thursday.
Dropping a piano from the roof was started by former Baker resident Charles Bruno ’74 in 1972 and was resumed as an annual tradition in 2005.
Notable Baker House alumni include Kenneth Olsen (Electrical Engineering, 1950), co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation
; Amar Bose
(Electrical Engineering, 1951), founder of the Bose Corporation and inventor of numerous audio technologies; Alan Guth
(Physics, 1968), astrophysicist and professor of physics at MIT; Timothy Carney (1966), former U.S. Ambassador to Sudan and Haiti; Gerald Sussman (Mathematics, 1968), professor of computer science at MIT; Geoffrey A. Landis
(physics, Electrical Engineering, 1980), NASA scientist and science fiction writer; Cady Coleman (1983), NASA
Astronaut; Wesley Bush (1983), Chairman and CEO, Northrop Grumman
; Warren Madden (1985), Weather Channel meterorologist; Jonathan Gruber, healthcare economist and political advisor (Economics, 1987); Charles Korsmo (Physics, 2000), actor in movies such as Hook
and Can't Hardly Wait
; and Ed Miller, noted poker authority.
In the summer of 2009, Baker House alumni held a reunion to celebrate Baker's 60th Anniversary which received a Great Dome award from the MIT Association of Alumni and Alumnae.
Bexley Hall, located at 46-52 Massachusetts Avenue, is an early twentieth century brick building, consisting of four four-story walkups surrounding a central courtyard. It is almost directly across the street from MIT's Building 7 — old MIT official directories described it as being "a stoned throw from the Institute". As former apartments which were renovated in the 1970s, Bexley suites have full kitchens and bathrooms. The soundproof walls of Bexley can be painted by students and are plastered with murals and graffiti, some of which date back to the 1960s.
Long known for its alternative culture, Bexley was among the first MIT dormitories to officially become coed, and it now houses 120 undergrads. It was also one of the first MIT dorms to be co-species, as residents used to let their cats roam free around the building decades before MIT officially adopted a cat-friendly policy in 2008.
Well known alumni of Bexley Hall include Dan Bricklin, co-inventor of the computerized spreadsheet, and Jeff Sagarin
, a sports computerized ratings guru who first became known through his ranking and odds (betting) lines in USA Today
, but who later was hired by the NCAA to help with computerizing the basketball tournament selection process. Also among best-recognized former Bexley residents were Institute Professor Jerome Lettvin
and his wife Maggie
who were Bexley "houseparents" in the 1970s and early 1980s. More recently, Drew Houston
the founder and CEO of the MIT start-up Dropbox lived in Bexley.
The dorm has a tightly-knit community where people share their suites' halls with the rest of the Bexley residents to form a network of rooms and living spaces. The main Lounges (all, except for the "lounge" at the front desk, created in the 1990s) include the "FU$K" lounge located on the third floor on the north side of the building next to the 305 suite. There is also the Coke lounge located on the south side on the fourth floor. In addition to its alternative culture and anti-rush ideas Bexley is also notorious for alleged LSD manufacturing in the infamous BEXMENT in the 70's.
Sometime in the early '70s, following leads in the phone hacking case of Cap'n Crunch
, the FBI paid a visit to Bexley. Twenty to thirty Bexleyites filled a living room on the first floor of 46 Mass. Ave. and were "interviewed" by two FBI agents. "We shared popcorn, and asked them more questions than they asked us; the spirit was boisterous."
A graffito on the inside of a closet door at 50 Mass. Ave. said, simply, '2.361'. To an MIT student the decimal notation could only identify a course number--in this case, for a Mechanical Engineering course (Course 2). "A perusal of the current (1970s) catalog showed no such course. At the time, I worked in the stacks at MIT's library. They had old course catalogs, so I looked in one from the '60s, and, sure enough, there it was: 2.361 Friction and Lubrication".
The May 1970 Grateful Dead
concerts at MIT were sponsored by Bexley's housemaster.
Burton-Conner House, (shortened to Burton-Conner or BC), is located at 410 Memorial Drive, on the north bank of the Charles River
. At maximum uncrowded capacity, Burton-Conner officially holds 344 students. The building is five stories high, plus a ground floor.
Burton-Conner is a combination of two major sections of the former "Riverside" hotel and apartment building, which MIT acquired and reopened as a dormitory in 1950. "Burton House" consists of the 3 western-most wings, while "Conner Hall" comprises the remaining 2 wings of the extended E-shaped structure. The two sections of the building are physically separated by a firewall
above the ground floor; to pass from Conner 4 to Burton 4, a resident must first descend to the ground floor. In the 1960s, a dining hall was added at the rear of Burton-Conner, on the side away from the river. Some years later, the dining hall was shut down, and the space was renamed the Porter Room, a shared meeting and student event space. The entire building underwent a complete restructuring during 1970-1971, when the internal layout was changed from a floor orientation (with floor-wide bathrooms and gang showers) to a suite orientation (introducing kitchens, suite lounges, and semi-private bathrooms).
In the dorm, nine floors (2 through 5 on the Conner side and 1 through 5 on the Burton side) are used for student housing. On Conner 1 are the housemaster
's apartment, a library with Athena
-network computers, a study area, and the Residential Life Associate's apartment. On the ground floor, notable features include an electronics lab and darkroom
(unused for over 10 years), music rooms, a game room, weight and exercise rooms, and a lounge with a snack bar.
Most residents name their floor by their section name followed by a cardinal number
denoting their floor, such as "Burton 2"; however, Burton Third is the only floor that is often named by an ordinal number
. Burton 2 has a large Jewish population because of the presence of a Kosher kitchen in its center suite. A group of Hillel
students gather on Burton 2 after Shabbat
(Jewish Sabbath) services and sit around a table to sing lively z'mirot (Jewish songs) in an event they know as "Tisch" every Friday evening.
In January 2011, current and former residents celebrated the 60th anniversary of Burton-Conner with a reunion gathering in the Porter Room. A special commemorative history was compiled for the occasion, along with enhancement of an ongoing website for residents and alumni.
Better known as East Campus or Fred the Dorm, the East Campus Alumni Memorial Houses located at 3 Ames Street, are an undergraduate dorm formed from six "houses" each named after an alumna/alumnus of MIT: Munroe, Hayden, Wood, Walcott, Bemis, and Goodale. The six "houses" are arranged in two long north-south parallels, east and west, of three houses each, and are connected by floor. There are 5 floors, plus a basement, in each parallel. The houses are architectural entities; the floors are social entities: once a student has got to her room, she can more easily walk to any other room on the floor than go up or down stairs to another floor. A student would typically think of herself as a resident of Fourth East (fourth floor, east parallel) rather than a resident of Bemis House. Floors with distinctive cultures often have additional names such as "Beast" (Second East), "Tetazoo" (Third East), "Slugfest" (Fourth East), "Florey" (Fifth East), "Putz" (Second West), or "41st West" (Fourth West).
The dorm celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2005. Because of the dorm's age, the 354 undergrads living there are allowed to paint and alter rooms and floor common spaces, up to the limits of what the Cambridge fire code will allow. Students frequently use technology to customize their rooms, building projects such as an Emergency Pizza Button to have Domino's deliver a cheese pizza, a disco dance floor, and an automatic door-unlocking system.
Notable alumni of East Campus include NASA
astronaut Michael Fincke, Ahmed Chalabi
of the Iraqi National Congress
and George Smoot
, co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics
.
MacGregor House, located at 450 Memorial Drive, was built in 1970 and is named for Frank S. MacGregor. It consists of a 16-story high-rise tower surrounded by a four-story low-rise. Both parts consist of suites grouped into "entries" of three to four floors each. The entries are named by letter: A, B, C, D, and E entries are located in the tower and F, G, H, and J entries are located in the low-rise. There is no I-entry, because (in true MIT style) i
is imaginary
.
Each suite in MacGregor houses six to eight people, usually coed; the entire dorm houses 326 undergrads. Almost all rooms in MacGregor are singles; the three doubles in F entry are an architectural anomaly. Each suite comes equipped with a bathroom and a kitchen area with a stove-top; in addition, one suite in an entry will also have an oven.
MacGregor features various amenities, including a music room, game room, and weight room. The central lounge, called the "TFL" (an acronym for "Tastefully Furnished Lounge") is on the first floor, near the convenience store
located inside MacGregor.
The exterior of the building was repaired to stop water leaks and further deterioration, but there was no funding to renovate the interior of the structure. In 2010, Maseeh donated $24 million for the purpose of increasing MIT's undergraduate enrollment by 270 students (an increase of 6%). To enable this, the number of undergraduate dormitory beds needed to be increased, since MIT now requires all undergraduate students to live in dormitories on campus for at least their first year. Maseeh Hall is the largest undergrad dormitory on campus, with 462 beds.
Opening of Maseeh Hall is scheduled for August 15, 2011.
Housemasters are Jack Carroll and Susanne Flynn (Professor in Course 24)
McCormick Hall, located at 320 Memorial Drive, is a women-only dormitory housing 237 undergrads. It consists of two 8-floor towers (the east tower and the west tower) and an annex. The three sections are connected on the ground floor. Each tower has a penthouse on the top floor that looks out on the Boston skyline. The funds for building McCormick Hall came from Katharine Dexter McCormick (SB 1904, Biology), a leading biologist
, suffragist, and philanthropist
in the early twentieth century.
The dining hall is open to all MIT students every weeknight evening.
Instead of having elevators, as in other newer dorms, air conditioning is available in the rooms of New House (limited funding forced a choice to be made between those two options). This feature becomes quite useful at the near-summer beginnings of fall terms and ends of spring terms, when local temperatures can reach up to 95° Fahrenheit.
) (wing)" when spoken, or "(cardinal number
) (wing initial)" when written, such as "5th west" or "5W". When Next House first opened, the hallway directly ahead of the elevator opening was referred to as "central," so one could live on "4th Central" as well; however, the lounge is now considered part of the west side. Each floor contains a large main lounge that faces the river, along with several smaller lounges, colloquially named in accordance to their location (e.g. "elevator lounge" or "far west lounge"), or nicknamed by their residents (ex. the 4W elevator lounge was dubbed the "White Rabbit Lounge" for the 2008-09 year). The 5th floor also features skylights placed various areas.
The first level is home to the infamous "TFL" (Tastefully Furnished Lounge, also the site of the annual "Next Act" theatrical production) along with music practice rooms, Next Dining (open everyday to all MIT students for breakfast and dinner), Athena cluster, and workout rooms. The basement level offers a laundry room, game area, and the Country Kitchen, where students are often seen cooking up various meals. The TFL was so named at the first Next House governance meeting after a suggestion was offered by a group of upper classmen who had moved from MacGregor House.
Despite its distance from campus, Next House is viewed as one of the most family-like dorms, thanks to its residence-based advising system and friendly atmosphere. Some students living at Next prefer to bike or take the Tech Shuttle to and from campus, while others enjoy the quiet walk.
Random Hall located at 290 Massachusetts Avenue
, was created by the joining of two old, identical buildings, a process known to some residents as "siamization." Random Hall is not actually named after anybody, but the fictional benefactor "J. Arthur Random" has been adopted by the residents.
Originally built in 1894 and converted to a dormitory in 1968, Random Hall is the oldest building owned by MIT, and lacks elevators. The four physical floors of the building are divided by the firewall
which runs down its middle, with openings between the sides on the first and third floors, creating eight logical floors which each have distinct personalities and names. The two sides of Random Hall are known as the "290 side" and the "282 side", after the street addresses of the two entries.
Random Hall is the smallest of the MIT dorms, housing only about 93 undergraduates, and is located about a block past the northern border of the main campus. Random Hall is known for its bathroom and laundry machine online servers
, which allow people to determine remotely whether bathrooms and washers or dryers are in use.
Senior House, is the oldest dormitory at MIT. Since its construction in 1918, it has served as the Institute's first dormitory and on-campus fraternity, a mixed undergraduate and graduate dorm, an all-graduate facility, a seniors' dormitory, and military housing during World War II
. It is currently a co-ed residence housing 146 undergrads. The building is an L-shaped building directly adjacent to the residence of the President of MIT. A tower at the center of the North side features neo-classical columns that reflect the architecture of the original MIT Cambridge
campus.
The building's street address is 4 Ames Street, but the mailing address is 70 Amherst Street, because the main entry was moved to what originally was the back of the building. Senior House has six entries:
Each entry has four floors, except for Runkle, which has six. The entries are arranged in an L-shape around a central courtyard. After major renovations, Senior House is one of two MIT undergrad dorms with air conditioning (May through September).
Senior House alumni include Lawrence Summers
(Economics, 1975), former president of Harvard University
and formerly Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration; Bruce Morrison
(Chemistry, 1965), United States Representative for the 3rd Congressional District of Connecticut, 1983–1991; Moshe Arens
(Mechanical Engineering, 1947), former member of the Israeli Knesset
, defense minister, and ambassador to the United States; Gordon S. Brown
(Electrical Engineering, 1931), former Dean of Engineering at MIT and a pioneer in the development of automatic-feedback systems and numerically controlled machine tools.
Simmons Hall located at 229 Vassar Street, was designed by architect Steven Holl
and dedicated in 2002. At the cost of $78.5 million, it is MIT's most expensive dormitory built on campus since Baker House.
It is 382 feet long and 10 stories tall, housing 344 undergraduates, plus faculty housemasters, visiting scholars, and graduate resident tutors (GRTs, MIT's equivalent of an RA). The structure is a massive reinforced concrete
block, perforated with approximately 5,500 square windows each measuring two feet (0.60 meters) on a side, plus additional larger and irregularly-shaped windows. An 18" (0.46 meters) wall depth is designed to allow the winter sun to help heat the building while providing shade in summer, without air conditioning. The students complain that the very small metal window frames and screens create a faraday cage
which make it difficult to receive wireless telephone signals. An average single room has nine windows, each with its own small curtain.
Internal design consists of one- and two-person rooms—some in suite-like settings with semi-private bathrooms—and lounges with and without kitchens, roughly arranged into three towers (the "A", "B", and "C" towers). Simmons Hall is one of the four dormitories that have dining halls; the dining facility is open Sunday through Thursday evenings to members of the MIT community.
The building has been nicknamed the "sponge", but opinions on the aesthetics of the building remain strongly divided. Simmons Hall won the 2003 American Institute of Architects
Honor Award for Architecture, and the 2004 Harleston Parker Medal
, administered by the Boston Society of Architects
and awarded to the "most beautiful piece of architecture building, monument or structure" in the Boston
area. On the other hand, the building has been criticized as being ugly, a sentiment echoed in James Kunstler's Eyesore of the Month catalog. Many of the residents of Simmons complain that aesthetics came as a higher priority than functionality. For example, residents in the "A" tower must take two different elevators, or must walk the length of the building twice (more than an eighth of a mile) to reach the dining hall because neither the "A" elevator nor "A" tower staircases reach the first floor, where the dining hall is located. Other oddities include staircases that do not offer access to every floor. Furnishings for dormitory rooms are custom-designed, modular, and made from plywood; they have received mixed reviews, garnering praise for their modularity, and criticism for their excessive weight and lack of durability.
Due to the architectural attention given to this building, architects are sometimes found trying to observe student life in the building, an occurrence that the students strongly resent (notices are sometimes sent out by e-mail when architects do enter the building, alerting residents to escort them out).
Additionally, as part of the MIT List Visual Arts Center's Percent-for-Art program, a piece was commissioned for the building by American artist Dan Graham
. The sculpture, titled Ying Yang Pavilion, consists of a partially-reflective, glass-walled, gravel-paved area in the shape of half of the ying-yang symbol in plan, while the other half contains a shallow pool of water. This pool is often populated by rubber ducks, the unofficial mascots of Simmons Hall. The art piece is located on a small terrace on the second floor of the building and is often used as a "jail" of sorts for unwanted guests, due to the fact that both entry and exit require MIT card access.
Simmons Hall was featured in the exhibit Inside the Sponge — Students Take on MIT Simmons Hall at the Canadian Centre for Architecture
in Montreal
in the fall of 2006.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, with a focus on student culture and dormitory life (including meal options). All undergrad MIT dorms are officially coed, and reserved for unmarried students, except McCormick Hall, which remains women-only. Because living conditions are strongly affected by architecture, there is coverage of that topic here. For a more esthetic architectural focus, see the article Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is located on a tract in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The campus spans approximately one mile of the north side of the Charles River basin directly opposite the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.The campus...
.
Baker House (W7)
Alvar Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware...
in 1947—1948 and built in 1949. Its distinctive design has an undulating shape which allows most rooms a view of the Charles River
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
, and gives many of the rooms a wedge-shaped layout. The dining hall features a "moon garden" roof that is also very distinctive. Aalto also designed furniture for the rooms. Baker House was renovated for its fiftieth anniversary, modernizing the plumbing, telecommunications, and electrical systems and removing some of the interior changes made over the years that were not in Aalto's original design.
The dorm was named after Everett Moore Baker, an MIT Dean of Students, who died in a plane crash in India in 1949. The dormitory houses 318 undergraduates in single, double, triple and quadruple rooms. Baker's dining halls are open to all MIT students Sunday through Thursday.
Dropping a piano from the roof was started by former Baker resident Charles Bruno ’74 in 1972 and was resumed as an annual tradition in 2005.
Notable Baker House alumni include Kenneth Olsen (Electrical Engineering, 1950), co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
; Amar Bose
Amar Bose
Amar Gopal Bose is an Bengali American electrical engineer, sound engineer and billionaire entrepreneur. He is the founder and chairman of Bose Corporation...
(Electrical Engineering, 1951), founder of the Bose Corporation and inventor of numerous audio technologies; Alan Guth
Alan Guth
Alan Harvey Guth is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist. Guth has researched elementary particle theory...
(Physics, 1968), astrophysicist and professor of physics at MIT; Timothy Carney (1966), former U.S. Ambassador to Sudan and Haiti; Gerald Sussman (Mathematics, 1968), professor of computer science at MIT; Geoffrey A. Landis
Geoffrey A. Landis
Geoffrey A. Landis is an American scientist, working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on planetary exploration, interstellar propulsion, solar power and photovoltaics...
(physics, Electrical Engineering, 1980), NASA scientist and science fiction writer; Cady Coleman (1983), NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
Astronaut; Wesley Bush (1983), Chairman and CEO, Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American global aerospace and defense technology company formed by the 1994 purchase of Grumman by Northrop. The company was the fourth-largest defense contractor in the world as of 2010, and the largest builder of naval vessels. Northrop Grumman employs over...
; Warren Madden (1985), Weather Channel meterorologist; Jonathan Gruber, healthcare economist and political advisor (Economics, 1987); Charles Korsmo (Physics, 2000), actor in movies such as Hook
Hook (film)
Hook is a 1991 American fantasy film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins, and features Maggie Smith, Caroline Goodall, Charlie Korsmo, Amber Scott, and Dante Basco. Hook acts as a sequel to Peter Pan's original adventures, focusing...
and Can't Hardly Wait
Can't Hardly Wait
Can't Hardly Wait is a 1998 American teen comedy film written and directed by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont. It stars Ethan Embry, Charlie Korsmo, Lauren Ambrose, Peter Facinelli, Seth Green, and Jennifer Love Hewitt, and is notable for a number of "before-they-were-famous" appearances by various...
; and Ed Miller, noted poker authority.
In the summer of 2009, Baker House alumni held a reunion to celebrate Baker's 60th Anniversary which received a Great Dome award from the MIT Association of Alumni and Alumnae.
Bexley Hall (W13)
Long known for its alternative culture, Bexley was among the first MIT dormitories to officially become coed, and it now houses 120 undergrads. It was also one of the first MIT dorms to be co-species, as residents used to let their cats roam free around the building decades before MIT officially adopted a cat-friendly policy in 2008.
Well known alumni of Bexley Hall include Dan Bricklin, co-inventor of the computerized spreadsheet, and Jeff Sagarin
Jeff Sagarin
Jeff Sagarin is an American sports statistician well-known for his development of a methodology for ranking and rating sports teams in a variety of sports...
, a sports computerized ratings guru who first became known through his ranking and odds (betting) lines in USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, but who later was hired by the NCAA to help with computerizing the basketball tournament selection process. Also among best-recognized former Bexley residents were Institute Professor Jerome Lettvin
Jerome Lettvin
Jerome Ysroael Lettvin was a cognitive scientist and professor Emeritus of Electrical and Bioengineering and Communications Physiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He is best known as the author of the 1959 paper, "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain", one of the most...
and his wife Maggie
Maggie Lettvin
Margaret B. Lettvin is an American writer and promoter of exercise and health. She was locally famous in the Boston, Massachusetts area in the 1970s for a television show called Maggie and The Beautiful Machine, and a book based on the show...
who were Bexley "houseparents" in the 1970s and early 1980s. More recently, Drew Houston
Drew Houston
Andrew "Drew" Houston is an American internet entrepreneur and is best known for being the founder and CEO of Dropbox, an online backup and storage service. According to Forbes magazine, he has a net worth of $400 million US dollars.-Early life:...
the founder and CEO of the MIT start-up Dropbox lived in Bexley.
The dorm has a tightly-knit community where people share their suites' halls with the rest of the Bexley residents to form a network of rooms and living spaces. The main Lounges (all, except for the "lounge" at the front desk, created in the 1990s) include the "FU$K" lounge located on the third floor on the north side of the building next to the 305 suite. There is also the Coke lounge located on the south side on the fourth floor. In addition to its alternative culture and anti-rush ideas Bexley is also notorious for alleged LSD manufacturing in the infamous BEXMENT in the 70's.
Sometime in the early '70s, following leads in the phone hacking case of Cap'n Crunch
John Draper
John Thomas Draper , also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch or Crunchman , is an American computer programmer and former phone phreak. He is a legendary figure within the computer programming world.- Background :Draper is the son of a U.S...
, the FBI paid a visit to Bexley. Twenty to thirty Bexleyites filled a living room on the first floor of 46 Mass. Ave. and were "interviewed" by two FBI agents. "We shared popcorn, and asked them more questions than they asked us; the spirit was boisterous."
A graffito on the inside of a closet door at 50 Mass. Ave. said, simply, '2.361'. To an MIT student the decimal notation could only identify a course number--in this case, for a Mechanical Engineering course (Course 2). "A perusal of the current (1970s) catalog showed no such course. At the time, I worked in the stacks at MIT's library. They had old course catalogs, so I looked in one from the '60s, and, sure enough, there it was: 2.361 Friction and Lubrication".
The May 1970 Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
concerts at MIT were sponsored by Bexley's housemaster.
Burton-Conner House (W51)
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
. At maximum uncrowded capacity, Burton-Conner officially holds 344 students. The building is five stories high, plus a ground floor.
Burton-Conner is a combination of two major sections of the former "Riverside" hotel and apartment building, which MIT acquired and reopened as a dormitory in 1950. "Burton House" consists of the 3 western-most wings, while "Conner Hall" comprises the remaining 2 wings of the extended E-shaped structure. The two sections of the building are physically separated by a firewall
Firewall (construction)
A firewall is a fireproof barrier used to prevent the spread of fire between or through buildings, structures, electrical substation transformers, or within an aircraft or vehicle.- Applications :...
above the ground floor; to pass from Conner 4 to Burton 4, a resident must first descend to the ground floor. In the 1960s, a dining hall was added at the rear of Burton-Conner, on the side away from the river. Some years later, the dining hall was shut down, and the space was renamed the Porter Room, a shared meeting and student event space. The entire building underwent a complete restructuring during 1970-1971, when the internal layout was changed from a floor orientation (with floor-wide bathrooms and gang showers) to a suite orientation (introducing kitchens, suite lounges, and semi-private bathrooms).
In the dorm, nine floors (2 through 5 on the Conner side and 1 through 5 on the Burton side) are used for student housing. On Conner 1 are the housemaster
Housemaster
In British education, a housemaster is a member of staff in charge of a boarding house, normally at a boarding school . The housemaster is responsible for the supervision and care of boarders in the house and typically lives on the premises...
's apartment, a library with Athena
Project Athena
Project Athena was a joint project of MIT, Digital Equipment Corporation, and IBM to produce a campus-wide distributed computing environment for educational use. It was launched in 1983, and research and development ran until June 30, 1991, eight years after it began...
-network computers, a study area, and the Residential Life Associate's apartment. On the ground floor, notable features include an electronics lab and darkroom
Darkroom
A darkroom is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of light sensitive photographic materials, including photographic film and photographic paper. Darkrooms have been created and used since the inception of photography in the early 19th century...
(unused for over 10 years), music rooms, a game room, weight and exercise rooms, and a lounge with a snack bar.
Most residents name their floor by their section name followed by a cardinal number
Cardinal number
In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number – the number of elements in the set. The transfinite cardinal numbers describe the sizes of infinite...
denoting their floor, such as "Burton 2"; however, Burton Third is the only floor that is often named by an ordinal number
Ordinal number
In set theory, an ordinal number, or just ordinal, is the order type of a well-ordered set. They are usually identified with hereditarily transitive sets. Ordinals are an extension of the natural numbers different from integers and from cardinals...
. Burton 2 has a large Jewish population because of the presence of a Kosher kitchen in its center suite. A group of Hillel
Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life
Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life is the largest Jewish campus organization in the world, working with thousands of college students globally...
students gather on Burton 2 after Shabbat
Shabbat
Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...
(Jewish Sabbath) services and sit around a table to sing lively z'mirot (Jewish songs) in an event they know as "Tisch" every Friday evening.
In January 2011, current and former residents celebrated the 60th anniversary of Burton-Conner with a reunion gathering in the Porter Room. A special commemorative history was compiled for the occasion, along with enhancement of an ongoing website for residents and alumni.
East Campus Alumni Memorial Housing (Buildings 62 and 64)
The dorm celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2005. Because of the dorm's age, the 354 undergrads living there are allowed to paint and alter rooms and floor common spaces, up to the limits of what the Cambridge fire code will allow. Students frequently use technology to customize their rooms, building projects such as an Emergency Pizza Button to have Domino's deliver a cheese pizza, a disco dance floor, and an automatic door-unlocking system.
Notable alumni of East Campus include NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
astronaut Michael Fincke, Ahmed Chalabi
Ahmed Chalabi
Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi is an Iraqi politician. He was interim oil minister in Iraq in April-May 2005 and December-January 2006 and deputy prime minister from May 2005 until May 2006. Chalabi failed to win a seat in parliament in the December 2005 elections, and when the new Iraqi cabinet was...
of the Iraqi National Congress
Iraqi National Congress
The Iraqi National Congress is an umbrella Iraqi opposition group led by Ahmed Chalabi. It was formed with the aid and direction of the United States government following the Gulf War, for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.-History:INC was set up following the...
and George Smoot
George Smoot
George Fitzgerald Smoot III is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, Nobel laureate, and $1 million TV quiz show prize winner . He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on COBE with John C...
, co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
.
MacGregor House (W61)
Imaginary unit
In mathematics, the imaginary unit allows the real number system ℝ to be extended to the complex number system ℂ, which in turn provides at least one root for every polynomial . The imaginary unit is denoted by , , or the Greek...
is imaginary
Imaginary number
An imaginary number is any number whose square is a real number less than zero. When any real number is squared, the result is never negative, but the square of an imaginary number is always negative...
.
Each suite in MacGregor houses six to eight people, usually coed; the entire dorm houses 326 undergrads. Almost all rooms in MacGregor are singles; the three doubles in F entry are an architectural anomaly. Each suite comes equipped with a bathroom and a kitchen area with a stove-top; in addition, one suite in an entry will also have an oven.
MacGregor features various amenities, including a music room, game room, and weight room. The central lounge, called the "TFL" (an acronym for "Tastefully Furnished Lounge") is on the first floor, near the convenience store
Convenience store
A convenience store, corner store, corner shop, commonly called a bodega in Spanish-speaking areas of the United States, is a small store or shop in a built up area that stocks a range of everyday items such as groceries, toiletries, alcoholic and soft drinks, and may also offer money order and...
located inside MacGregor.
Maseeh Hall (W1)
The structure at 305 Memorial Drive, now named after Fariborz Maseeh (ScD 1990, Civil Engineering), predates MIT's move to Cambridge in 1916, and has borne several names over the course of time. It is located at the intersection of Memorial Drive and Massachusetts Avenue, across the street from MIT's Building 1, and was originally operated as the "Riverbank Court Hotel" from 1901—1937. In 1938, MIT reopened it as "Graduate House", later renaming it "Ashdown House" after its first faculty housemaster. By the beginning of the 21st century, the building had become run-down and in need of renovation. Graduate students were moved out, to a new Ashdown House (NW35) located much further away, a controversial decision justified by a desire to house all undergrads as close as possible to MIT's central campus.The exterior of the building was repaired to stop water leaks and further deterioration, but there was no funding to renovate the interior of the structure. In 2010, Maseeh donated $24 million for the purpose of increasing MIT's undergraduate enrollment by 270 students (an increase of 6%). To enable this, the number of undergraduate dormitory beds needed to be increased, since MIT now requires all undergraduate students to live in dormitories on campus for at least their first year. Maseeh Hall is the largest undergrad dormitory on campus, with 462 beds.
Opening of Maseeh Hall is scheduled for August 15, 2011.
Housemasters are Jack Carroll and Susanne Flynn (Professor in Course 24)
McCormick Hall (W4)
Biologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
, suffragist, and philanthropist
Philanthropist
A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...
in the early twentieth century.
The dining hall is open to all MIT students every weeknight evening.
New House (W70)
New House, sometimes referred to as New West Campus Houses, houses 291 undergrads at 471—476 Memorial Drive. The dormitory is a series of six joined five-story buildings arranged in a zig-zag fashion, each (like East Campus's sections) named after alumni. A main hallway on the first floor (known as "The Arcade") connects all the houses, and pairwise upper-floor connections also exist between houses 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 6. (All of the smaller buildings comprising New House are also referred to as "houses.") There are kitchens throughout the dormitory. New House is connected through a tunnel to MacGregor House next door, so that residents can have easy access to MacGregor's convenience store.Instead of having elevators, as in other newer dorms, air conditioning is available in the rooms of New House (limited funding forced a choice to be made between those two options). This feature becomes quite useful at the near-summer beginnings of fall terms and ends of spring terms, when local temperatures can reach up to 95° Fahrenheit.
Next House (W71)
Next House, located at 500 Memorial Drive, is five stories tall and houses about 350 people. Patterned after the success of Baker House, it opened in September 1981. The Next House designation was unofficial and thought to be temporary until a sufficient donation had been received to name the dorm. As a result, the Institute has nearly always referred to the building as 500 Memorial Drive, while students have always called the dorm "Next House". It is divided into east and west wings which are connected at the center, so, like East Campus, location is referred to by "(ordinal numberOrdinal number
In set theory, an ordinal number, or just ordinal, is the order type of a well-ordered set. They are usually identified with hereditarily transitive sets. Ordinals are an extension of the natural numbers different from integers and from cardinals...
) (wing)" when spoken, or "(cardinal number
Cardinal number
In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number – the number of elements in the set. The transfinite cardinal numbers describe the sizes of infinite...
) (wing initial)" when written, such as "5th west" or "5W". When Next House first opened, the hallway directly ahead of the elevator opening was referred to as "central," so one could live on "4th Central" as well; however, the lounge is now considered part of the west side. Each floor contains a large main lounge that faces the river, along with several smaller lounges, colloquially named in accordance to their location (e.g. "elevator lounge" or "far west lounge"), or nicknamed by their residents (ex. the 4W elevator lounge was dubbed the "White Rabbit Lounge" for the 2008-09 year). The 5th floor also features skylights placed various areas.
The first level is home to the infamous "TFL" (Tastefully Furnished Lounge, also the site of the annual "Next Act" theatrical production) along with music practice rooms, Next Dining (open everyday to all MIT students for breakfast and dinner), Athena cluster, and workout rooms. The basement level offers a laundry room, game area, and the Country Kitchen, where students are often seen cooking up various meals. The TFL was so named at the first Next House governance meeting after a suggestion was offered by a group of upper classmen who had moved from MacGregor House.
Despite its distance from campus, Next House is viewed as one of the most family-like dorms, thanks to its residence-based advising system and friendly atmosphere. Some students living at Next prefer to bike or take the Tech Shuttle to and from campus, while others enjoy the quiet walk.
Random Hall (NW61)
Massachusetts Avenue (Boston)
Massachusetts Avenue, known to locals as Mass Ave, is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts, and several cities and towns northwest of Boston...
, was created by the joining of two old, identical buildings, a process known to some residents as "siamization." Random Hall is not actually named after anybody, but the fictional benefactor "J. Arthur Random" has been adopted by the residents.
Originally built in 1894 and converted to a dormitory in 1968, Random Hall is the oldest building owned by MIT, and lacks elevators. The four physical floors of the building are divided by the firewall
Firewall (construction)
A firewall is a fireproof barrier used to prevent the spread of fire between or through buildings, structures, electrical substation transformers, or within an aircraft or vehicle.- Applications :...
which runs down its middle, with openings between the sides on the first and third floors, creating eight logical floors which each have distinct personalities and names. The two sides of Random Hall are known as the "290 side" and the "282 side", after the street addresses of the two entries.
Random Hall is the smallest of the MIT dorms, housing only about 93 undergraduates, and is located about a block past the northern border of the main campus. Random Hall is known for its bathroom and laundry machine online servers
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
, which allow people to determine remotely whether bathrooms and washers or dryers are in use.
Senior House (E2)
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. It is currently a co-ed residence housing 146 undergrads. The building is an L-shaped building directly adjacent to the residence of the President of MIT. A tower at the center of the North side features neo-classical columns that reflect the architecture of the original MIT Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
campus.
The building's street address is 4 Ames Street, but the mailing address is 70 Amherst Street, because the main entry was moved to what originally was the back of the building. Senior House has six entries:
- Ware
- Atkinson
- Runkle (John Daniel RunkleJohn Daniel RunkleJohn Daniel Runkle was a U.S. educator and mathematician. He served as acting president of MIT from 1868–70 and president between 1870 and 1878.-Biography:Professor Runkle was born at Root, New York State...
, second president of MIT) - Holman (Silas W. Holman, professor of physics)
- Nichols (Ernest Fox NicholsErnest Fox NicholsErnest Fox Nichols was a U.S. educator and physicist. He was born in Leavenworth County, Kansas, and received his undergraduate degree from Kansas State University in 1888. After working for a year in the Chemistry Department at Kansas State, he matriculated to graduate school at Cornell...
, ninth president of MIT) - Crafts (James CraftsJames CraftsJames Mason Crafts was an American chemist, best known for developing the Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation reactions with Charles Friedel in 1876.-Biography:...
, fourth president of MIT).
Each entry has four floors, except for Runkle, which has six. The entries are arranged in an L-shape around a central courtyard. After major renovations, Senior House is one of two MIT undergrad dorms with air conditioning (May through September).
Senior House alumni include Lawrence Summers
Lawrence Summers
Lawrence Henry Summers is an American economist. He served as the 71st United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He was Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President Barack Obama until November 2010.Summers is the...
(Economics, 1975), former president of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and formerly Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration; Bruce Morrison
Bruce Morrison
Bruce Andrew Morrison is a former Congressman from Connecticut and candidate for Governor of Connecticut. He is a lobbyist and immigration lawyer...
(Chemistry, 1965), United States Representative for the 3rd Congressional District of Connecticut, 1983–1991; Moshe Arens
Moshe Arens
Moshe Arens is an Israeli aeronautical engineer, researcher and former diplomat and politician. A member of the Knesset between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens has also served as the Israeli...
(Mechanical Engineering, 1947), former member of the Israeli Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
, defense minister, and ambassador to the United States; Gordon S. Brown
Gordon S. Brown
Gordon Stanley Brown was a professor of electrical engineering at MIT. He originated many of the concepts behind automatic-feedback control systems and the numerical control of machine tools. From 1959 to 1968, he served as the dean of MIT's engineering school. With his former student Donald P...
(Electrical Engineering, 1931), former Dean of Engineering at MIT and a pioneer in the development of automatic-feedback systems and numerically controlled machine tools.
Simmons Hall (W79)
Steven Holl
Steven Holl is an American architect and watercolorist, perhaps best known for the 1998 Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland, the 2003 Simmons Hall at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the celebrated 2007 Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City,...
and dedicated in 2002. At the cost of $78.5 million, it is MIT's most expensive dormitory built on campus since Baker House.
It is 382 feet long and 10 stories tall, housing 344 undergraduates, plus faculty housemasters, visiting scholars, and graduate resident tutors (GRTs, MIT's equivalent of an RA). The structure is a massive reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...
block, perforated with approximately 5,500 square windows each measuring two feet (0.60 meters) on a side, plus additional larger and irregularly-shaped windows. An 18" (0.46 meters) wall depth is designed to allow the winter sun to help heat the building while providing shade in summer, without air conditioning. The students complain that the very small metal window frames and screens create a faraday cage
Faraday cage
A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure formed by conducting material or by a mesh of such material. Such an enclosure blocks out external static and non-static electric fields...
which make it difficult to receive wireless telephone signals. An average single room has nine windows, each with its own small curtain.
Internal design consists of one- and two-person rooms—some in suite-like settings with semi-private bathrooms—and lounges with and without kitchens, roughly arranged into three towers (the "A", "B", and "C" towers). Simmons Hall is one of the four dormitories that have dining halls; the dining facility is open Sunday through Thursday evenings to members of the MIT community.
The building has been nicknamed the "sponge", but opinions on the aesthetics of the building remain strongly divided. Simmons Hall won the 2003 American Institute of Architects
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
Honor Award for Architecture, and the 2004 Harleston Parker Medal
Harleston Parker Medal
The Harleston Parker Medal was established in 1921 by J. Harleston Parker to recognize “such architects as shall have, in the opinion of the Boston Society of Architects. ....
, administered by the Boston Society of Architects
Boston Society of Architects
One of the oldest and largest chapters of the AIA, the Boston Society of Architects is a nonprofit membership organization committed to architecture, design and the built environment .-History:...
and awarded to the "most beautiful piece of architecture building, monument or structure" in the Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
area. On the other hand, the building has been criticized as being ugly, a sentiment echoed in James Kunstler's Eyesore of the Month catalog. Many of the residents of Simmons complain that aesthetics came as a higher priority than functionality. For example, residents in the "A" tower must take two different elevators, or must walk the length of the building twice (more than an eighth of a mile) to reach the dining hall because neither the "A" elevator nor "A" tower staircases reach the first floor, where the dining hall is located. Other oddities include staircases that do not offer access to every floor. Furnishings for dormitory rooms are custom-designed, modular, and made from plywood; they have received mixed reviews, garnering praise for their modularity, and criticism for their excessive weight and lack of durability.
Due to the architectural attention given to this building, architects are sometimes found trying to observe student life in the building, an occurrence that the students strongly resent (notices are sometimes sent out by e-mail when architects do enter the building, alerting residents to escort them out).
Additionally, as part of the MIT List Visual Arts Center's Percent-for-Art program, a piece was commissioned for the building by American artist Dan Graham
Dan Graham
Dan Graham , is a conceptual artist now working out of New York City. He is an influential figure in the field of contemporary art, both a practitioner of conceptual art and an art critic and theorist. His art career began in 1964 when he moved to New York and opened the John Daniels Gallery....
. The sculpture, titled Ying Yang Pavilion, consists of a partially-reflective, glass-walled, gravel-paved area in the shape of half of the ying-yang symbol in plan, while the other half contains a shallow pool of water. This pool is often populated by rubber ducks, the unofficial mascots of Simmons Hall. The art piece is located on a small terrace on the second floor of the building and is often used as a "jail" of sorts for unwanted guests, due to the fact that both entry and exit require MIT card access.
Simmons Hall was featured in the exhibit Inside the Sponge — Students Take on MIT Simmons Hall at the Canadian Centre for Architecture
Canadian Centre for Architecture
The Canadian Centre for Architecture is a museum of architecture and research centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Phyllis Lambert is the Founding Director and Chair of the Board of Trustees, and Mirko Zardini is the Director and Chief Curator....
in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
in the fall of 2006.