The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (collection)/Building a Chapter House
Some learn only through their own experience, by hard knocks and not by suggestion; others pick up an idea or a method as soon as it is presented to them. Now that it seems to be the style, and I think it a good one, for every fraternity chapter to have its own house whether it has any money or not, I thought it might be helpful to tell the story of how we got our house, in the hope that my tale might serve as an incentive to others to do as we did.
I don't remember who it was that first suggested the idea of building a chapter house. I presume it was Wes King, for Wes was a lawyer down town who had worked collections on the side and who had learned to wring money from the most reluctant debtors. He was a man who under difficulties got results. One of the brothers was responsible for the statement that Wes had stopped in front of a wooden Indian one day, and by flattery and cajolery had induced him to pay a bill which had been long owing by the proprietor within, so I feel sure it must have been Wes who first made the suggestion. Whoever it was, he had nerve.
When our chapter was first organized we did business, as the other chapters did at that time, in a suite of rooms down town over first one restaurant and then another. These rooms were reached by a dark and untidy box stair, and though they seemed to us at first quite elegant and palatial, they were, in point of fact, bare and barn-like and uninviting. They were too remote from the campus to serve as a convenient meeting place, and they did not furnish the slightest semblance of a home as a fraternity house is today supposed to do. The members of the chapter were scattered about the town, and there was little chance of their all getting together in the rooms excepting on Friday and Saturday nights, and even then there was little to be done excepting to pound the piano, which was usually out of tune, or to sit around on the stiff uncomfortable chairs and smoke, and smoking made some of the brothers sick. The rooms were rather scantily furnished, and as I look back at them now through the vista of twenty-five years, they were pretty close to impossible as a loafing place or a living place. It was only the companionship of congenial friends that made them seem something like an imitation of home.
We all had keys to these apartments, and we used to wander up to the rooms every day or two alone or with some pal and sit round and imagine we were enjoying ourselves. We held our initiations there—pretty rough some of them were with very little regalia and very much less paraphernalia; we invited our girl friends in sometimes, under proper chaperonage, but it was after all a poor substitute for real fraternity life.
We stuck to this sort of thing for three years, I believe it was, and then, following the example of some of the older fraternities, we rented a house near the campus, on Green Street, bought, borrowed, or stole a little furniture, and became from that time on a real part of the college community. I have often wondered just what form of mental aberration was afflicting the man who designed the house into which we moved and in which we lived for the next few* years. It was not particularly suitable for a dwelling house or a summer hotel or a hospital; it had rooms of the most curious shape, and of the most unheard-of arrangement; it had an unusable basement which we converted into a dining-room, this latter room approached by a dark unventilated passage way; there was no attic and few closets; but we disposed ourselves in it with a good deal of comfort and satisfaction and began soon to realize for the first time some of the possibilities of the right sort of fraternity life. If the house had been better and more convenient, perhaps we should not so soon have conceived the idea of having a house of our own. At any rate one might as well look with optimism upon the experiences of life, and derive some satisfaction and profit, if possible, from its discomforts.
It may have been when the plastering fell in the hallway and nearly killed one of the brothers, or when the furnace went out of business, or the plumbing threw a fit—I have forgotten. At any rate some domestic disaster caused us to get together and wonder why we could not have a house of our own. The Phi Delts were building, and though we were not so old as they and did not have a cent of money to our names, we could not see why we should not follow as advanced ideas as they. It was the optimism of youth and of inexperience.
It was in the spring of 1901 that we grew desperate and did something. A few of our local enthusiasts got together and worked out a system of chapter house notes. It was a simple system, and any optimist quick at figures and skillful at pushing a lead pencil could easily figure in a few minutes that it would take us only a short time to have the amount raised, the house built, and a reserve fund out at interest.
In brief, the plan was to induce each brother, active and alumni, to sign ten notes of ten dollars each, one note a year to be due for each of ten successive years. There was to be no objection raised if any brother insisted on paying the entire series of notes in advance. Wes King was elected general manager of the note signing business and was to take special care of the alumni, and I want to record my statement right here that in getting fellows to promise to pay sums of money, he has no equal this side of Los Angeles. In point of fact he induced a good many people to promise to pay who have not paid and who, I am now convinced, never had any intention of doing so. They simply signed the notes or wrote the letter to get rid of him. I have a collection of these notes and letters in the upper right hand drawer of my desk now that I often look at and read with the greatest interest, but with a somewhat weakened and waning faith in the promises of man. Some time if I become desperate I may publish these, if the writers continue to ignore their promises, but I still retain a few rags of hope that I may ultimately get real money from them. Hans Mueller had the job of running the members of the local chapter into the corral and getting them to sign, and he, too, proved a good solicitor.
I drew the job of treasurer and general custodian of the notes, because I was a guileless college professor who knew no better. In contemplating the job of treasurer from a distance I must confess that it has its attractions. It has all the symptoms of what the undergraduate calls a "pipe." I remember asking a six year old neighbor boy of mine whose father is a bank president just what the older man did for a living. "He just gives money away," was the reply, and this answer with slight verbal changes expressed my idea of the business of a treasurer. I thought that he simply received money that was sent him. In retrospect, however, such a position takes on a very different aspect. If anyone who reads these paragraphs has had in mind accepting the position of treasurer of a corporation organized not for profit and composed largely of undergraduates who propose to build a fraternity house, my advice to him would be the same as that offered by Mr. Douglas Jerrold to young men about to get married—"don't." It is a delusion and a snare. That simple innocent job of treasurer has caused me more pain, has caused my fraternity brothers more annoyance, and has required more letters to be written which have never been answered than I ever dreamed of. I have held it twenty years, because I did not dare to drop it, and there was no one else foolish enough to take it away from me.
We got twenty-three sets of notes at the first canvass, and though this seemed pretty good, many of the old fellows did not sign them and have not since shown any material interest in the house building scheme. A number of these brothers have been back to enjoy and to admire the house after it was built, but their appreciation has not gone further than laudatory words. In recent years it has been the policy of the chapter to require each one of the initiates to sign a series of these notes, though each man is allowed to set the date when his first note is to be paid. It was our hope when this scheme of house notes was devised that some of the brothers would pay them out quickly and that with the first money we accumulated we should invest in a suitable site for the house.
I remember with what delight I received the first payment. It came from one of the brothers who was getting well or working or enjoying himself at some German health resort, and who sent me a postal money order for fifty marks. I had never had any occasion previous to this, excepting when in the grades, I was working out my problems in compound numbers, to satisfy my curiosity as to how much real money one can get for a mark, but I find that the first entry I made in the ledger which I immediately started is $11.80. I guess I got the full worth of the order as marks go now.
The house notes as they came due were paid with reasonable promptness. Some fellows who had little money and who, therefore, had to manage their financial matters carefully, sent in the money before they received a notice, but for the most part it required one or two reminders before the response came. A few—not many—of these men have been receiving two or three notices a year for the past fifteen years without my getting a single response. I am an optimist so I keep hoping. By the spring of 1904 we had accumulated one thousand three hundred and fifty dollars, but long before this some of the other brothers had had their eyes on two good looking lots near the campus which we were sure would be just the place to build our house. In order that we might be able to hold property legally we realized the necessity of forming a corporation, and this we did in the spring of 1904. This corporation consists of nineteen members, eleven members of the active chapter elected by the chapter each spring, and eight life members elected from the alumni. The real business of the corporation is done by a Board of Directors, seven in number, four from the active chapter and three from the resident alumni. When all this preliminary organization had been accomplished Wes King went over and hypnotized the old German—or was it his wife—who owned the John Street lots and stole them from him; that is, he got a contract from him to sell them to us for three thousand dollars, we to pay down five hundred dollars and to have the privilege of reducing the remainder of the debt by the payment of such sums as we should be able to raise at any time we wished. We were able to clear the mortgage in less than two years largely with money collected from our house notes.
I said that the money was collected largely from the house notes. The rest of it came from the issuing of gold bonds, two thousand dollars of which were really disposed of. The original intention was to sell five thousand dollars worth to launch our enterprise, but the brothers did not fall for the gold bonds with the enthusiasm that we had anticipated; it struck them as a good deal like putting good money into mining stock. In point of fact, the gold bond idea had the least in it of any of the bright thoughts which came to us in working up the house scheme. We have found these bonds harder to handle than any other indebtedness, and I feel that they were perhaps a mistake. Some of them have been given to the corporation, by the holders; now and then one has been paid when we had made some lucky collection and had the money; and the rest still remain to be cancelled as we prosper sufficiently to take them up.
With our lots paid for we felt that we were in a position to begin to build our house. There was only one trifling handicap that held us back, and that was the lack of money. Some of the interested members of the Board of Directors had made investigations as to the possibility of our getting money from some of the Chicago houses which make a business of lending money to those in need, but the project of building a house for irresponsible undergraduates in college was a new one, and no one was willing at first to take the risk. Building and Loan Associations would not then consider the proposition for a moment, though now that the building of such houses has become common and has been shown to be a safe enterprise in which to invest capital, it is not especially difficult to persuade either private individuals or Building and Loan Associations to lend money for such a purpose.
It was one of our local members, abetted by two other wide-awake lawyers from our alumni, who finally presented the scheme to the Chicago Savings Bank with such a rosy aspect as to win their favor. They had it all worked out to a minute when we could pay it back and all planned to a I where the money was coming from. I was reading over the proposed schedule of payments just a few days ago, and it surely looked beautiful on paper. We have not done the business at all as he worked it out, but we have done it in quite as good a way if in a different one. As I intimated this Chicago firm agreed to lend us twelve thousand dollars for twelve years at five and one-half per cent on a first mortgage, and this amount made it seem possible for us to begin the house. We had hoped to get by with eighteen thousand dollars and since a local business man agreed to give us three thousand dollars on a second mortgage, we felt that the house was as good as built and began to save money for furniture.
As soon as the money was in sight a committee was appointed with full power to select an architect, approve of plans, and get things moving. This was in the spring of 1906. We had a number of sketches presented. It was thought at first that for the sake of sentiment and perhaps to save a little money, it would be desirable to have one of our brothers design the house; but I had learned long ago that no one is likely to save much money by letting his relatives work for him, or in fact, in working for them, and it was not long before we were all agreed that the wisest plan for us was to employ the best architect we could get, even if we had to go to Boston to find him. This we did, and he made us a plan which was simple and dignified and which still causes our house, although it is nearly the oldest one about the campus, to be admired and praised by visitors to the University for its beauty and convenient arrangement perhaps more than any other house which has been built. I have since advised all my friends to engage a good architect even if they contemplate building only a woodshed or a dog kennel.
We were not easily satisfied with our plans; like all builders with limited means, we wanted a large number of big rooms within a limited floor space, and we wanted everything on the first floor. When everything had been adjusted to our satisfaction so far as this was possible we submitted the plans to contractors for bids. If any architect has ever submitted plans to a contractor and had the bids come within the original estimate I should like to have the name and address of both. At any rate the bids on our house ran two thousand dollars beyond anything which we had in our wildest moments considered. We had to cut, and we did it generously, and then let the contract. In round numbers the total cost of the house including lighting fixtures, walks, and everything necessary to its completion was twenty-one thousand dollars. It will be remembered that the amount of money we had borrowed was fifteen thousand dollars and this left six thousand dollars unprovided for. We had during the interim since our house notes were first issued saved two thousand five hundred dollars from this source, and the remaining three thousand five hundred dollars we borrowed from the contractor and from four of our alumni. When the house was done in the fall we had money enough to meet all of our outstanding obligations.
Even now when these scattered obligations have all been met I am convinced that we spent too much on the house. The paying of the extra three thousand five hundred dollars strained every nerve of the three or four fellows responsible for its collection. I don't know now how we ever secured it. We got some of it from the house notes, we saved a little from the rent; we insulted some of our well-to-do alumni until they gave it to us to get rid of us, but ultimately we paid it—in fact we paid it exactly when we agreed to do so. Our house was so large that it required a big chapter roll in order that it might be full and the rent be easily paid, and I have yet to be convinced that a chapter roll larger than twenty-five is likely to be the most efficiently managed. I think that most fraternities lack the courage to build a house well within their means and best suited to their needs. They are all afraid that if they do not build a house larger than their neighbors, people will think them poor; just as some men are afraid to buy a Ford for fear that some one will imagine they cannot get by with a Cadillac.
When the time came for moving into the new house we had very little furniture. The old stuff we had had in the Green Street house had been hardly dealt with for nearly ten years. We gave it all a complete over-hauling, presented some of it to the Associated Charities, sent some to the repair shop to be gone over and refinished, and consigned the rest to the bedrooms. We had been gradually collecting a furniture fund, but it was entirely inadequate. Here again we fell back on the local chapter and the alumni. Some of the younger fellows were more than ordinarily skilful in handling tools and these agreed to make in the engineering shops some of the larger pieces of furniture for the living-room and library, such as the tables and the big lounging chairs. We found that by this method we could materially reduce the cost and in addition introduce a little element of sentiment. The fellows who had worked the hardest to raise the money for the house gave the most liberally toward buying the furniture or gave rugs, chairs, or curtains as they chose. The place looked mighty good to us when late in the fall of 1907 the curtains hung, the rugs down—I thought that the living-room rug was especially handsome because Frank Scott and I had paid for it—and the furniture placed, we moved in. No one knows so well how to appreciate an accomplishment of this sort as when he has done his level best to bring it about.
But our troubles were not all over when we had moved into the house; in fact as treasurer of the corporation I was soon convinced that they had only just begun. The regular payments had to be made. The money for these was to come from the rent which we received for the house from the local chapter, and from the income from the house notes. The rent we set at one thousand five hundred dollars a year, and the notes should have brought us another thousand. We have always received the rent, but the notes have often brought us no more than two-thirds of what they were estimated to do.
The fellows often lose interest when they get away from college. Their duties multiply, their obligations increase, and they are likely to forget the chapter house. The best help to keep every one in touch with the house and the active chapter has been a chapter quarterly paper sent to every one who has ever been connected with the chapter, and containing personal items about all the brothers, and news of the college and the campus. It took us several years to find this out, and I think in consequence we have lost several thousands of dollars that we should have collected had we started the quarterly earlier. The main idea is not to let one forget or lose his hold upon the old life.
At the end of two years we saw that we should have to raise the rent to two thousand dollars a year if we were to meet our payments, for repairs became necessary almost at once, taxes and insurance were high and growing higher, and we had no sooner built than the city authorities passed ordinances to pave on four sides of our block. The improvement increased the value of our property, it is true, but it also increased the drain upon our exchequer. All this increase of expenditure made it the more necessary that the chapter roll be kept large. It was again in my mind an argument in support of the statement that we had built rather too generously.
It was in 1910, I believe, that we decided to increase the rent paid by the chapter. Our indebtedness had by this time been reduced to fifteen thousand dollars, all the loose bills and personal debts having been taken care of. At the same time, it seemed best to those who had looked most carefully into our financial affairs that if possible we should pay off our two mortgages and take out one loan of fifteen thousand dollars from a Building and Loan Association. After some negotiations we were able to do this, and our monthly payments in this association were for the next five years one hundred sixty-two dollars and fifty cents a month. This amount we were able to meet from the rent, and the income from the house notes took care of the taxes, improvements, and repairs. It is true that we sometimes ran pretty close to shore but whenever my bank account ran down near the five hundred dollar mark, I began to retrench or to put the pressure upon the delinquent brothers. I was forced to resort to all sorts of tactics to get the notes paid, but we were always able to pay the bills when they were presented. I do not believe the fellows out in the world and far away from college have realized in any sense what a responsibility it meant to carry the house. They have argued that it would be all right if they paid when it was convenient; they have been angry often when they have been "dunned"; they have thought me at times sarcastic and insistent, but they did not consider that there was the regular monthly assessment to be met, and the regular bills to be paid, and behind it all only the rent and the promises which they had made. The fact that I always kept in the bank this surplus of five hundred dollars has more than once saved the corporation from disaster.
Later we decided that it would be best again to refund the loan which had now, through our regular payments, been reduced to something less than nine thousand dollars. Without much trouble we were able to make this refund, and so to reduce our monthly payments to less than one hundred dollars a month. This reduction in our monthly payments made it possible to reduce the rent exacted from the local chapter to one hundred and fifty dollars a month for ten months, and later to one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, and so to relieve the chapter of a burden which for so many years it had been carrying without complaint. It has never seemed to me that we should quickly relieve the property of debt. The more people who have a part in helping to bear the burden, the more will these men after they become alumni appreciate the value of the house. Perhaps later it may seem desirable again to refund the loan in order that the rent may be reduced to one hundred dollars a month, an amount which the chapter could always easily pay.
There is no likelihood that we shall for many years at least abandon the house notes. There are constant improvements and repairs which need to be made on the house; as it grows, older these will proportionately increase. We realize that the best possible economy is to keep the house in first-class repair, and all this takes money and a good deal of it. Besides this, the house notes give every man an interest in the house and a sense of ownership. His regular payments for ten years recall to his mind his undergraduate days and bring him back to see the fellows and to live over again the details of his youth. I am sure the house notes are a good thing.
We now owe about eight thousand dollars on property which valued very conservatively is worth fifty thousand dollars; we have the payments arranged in such a way that we can meet them without putting an unreasonable burden upon any one. Our house is a real home, it is in good repair, and is one of which we may well be proud for many years to come. I shall be gone very likely before there is a new house built for the chapter, for though I am not yet a patriarch, I am still the oldest of the small group of men who worked to bring about the completion of this house. Those who come after me and who may have a part in building a new and a better house for the chapter, have my kindest wishes. In more ways than they think, their labor will be a labor of love; but I hope that they will feel as I have felt that the struggle is worth while, that the effort put forth is more than compensated for in the satisfaction of seeing the result. It has cost me some worry and not a few postage stamps, as it has cost a number of the other brothers. I have written thousands of letters and have had, I have no doubt, scores of replies, but I never walk down the street in which the house is situated without feeling a glow of satisfaction that we did it.
There are others, who read this, who if they had the courage and nerve and persistence, might do even better than we have done.