Today, Dickinson has three fraternities, but that didn’t used to be the case. Sixty years ago, many campus buildings were owned by fraternities. 

Fraternity houses were everywhere. The Biddle House, the Quarry, the Admissions building and the quads all used to be fraternity housing that have been gradually repurposed by the school during the slow decline of Greek life on campus.  

As recently as 1957, there were 10 active fraternities with chapter houses dispersed throughout campus, a stark contrast to present day with only one special interest house designated to Delta Sigma Phi. According to Sean Ryan, the Associate Director of Fraternity Life and Experiential Leadership Education, there are currently three active fraternities on campus: Kappa Alpha Psi inc., Sigma Lambda Beta and Delta Sigma Phi.

The building where the Quarry is now was built by Phi Delta Theta in 1899 and purchased by Dickinson in 1931 following the fraternity’s construction of Stuart House, now known as the Social Justice house, in order to accommodate more brothers. Following minor renovations, the Quarry was converted into offices and classrooms for the Department of Education and Psychology. The building then became home to the Music Department in 1958 for some time before it became the college’s media center. In 2000, the school decided to make the building a coffee bar student social space, and the Quarry was born. 

Biddle House also went through multiple phases over the past 60 years. The building was purchased by Dickinson in 1946 and was a co-ed living space. Sigma Alpha Epsilon lived in the house until 1990 when the school decided to designate it the Arts House.  It then became offices and the basement was used for the Department of Theater and Dance. The first floor was turned into the Clarke Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Contemporary Issues. Since 2004, Biddle House has been used for the registrar’s office, the Career Center and Academic Advising. 

Sigma Alpha Epsilon lived in a house next to Biddle beginning in 1946 until the school built the lower quads in 1964. That year, the fraternity had to move into quad five, now known as Baird-McClintock Hall. Following their residence in the quads, the fraternity moved to Biddle House.  

Another prominent building on campus, the Robert A. Waidner Admissions Building, was originally Alpha Chi Rho’s fraternity house. They lived there from 1946 until the school bought the building in 1964 and the fraternity had to move to the quads. The building went through an extensive refurbishing in the late 1980s. This house was built in 1905 and the original owner, Abram Bosler, did not want it to burn down, so he had the home built with fireproof concrete. It was the first house in Carlisle to use this material.

The quads, which currently houses first years, used to be known as “Fraternity Quadrangle.” The quads replaced the fraternity houses in 1964. It cost $2.24 million to construct the buildings, which the college paid for with a federal loan and bond issues. Some of the fraternities that lived in the quads were Phi Epsilon Pi in Conway, Theta Chi in Buchanan Hall, Alpha Chi Rho in Atwater and Phi Kappa Sigma in Armstrong.

Other buildings have changed over the years. The library used to be in Bosler Hall. It was moved in 1967 to the Waidner-Spahr Library building that we know today. The current Weiss Center for the Arts used to be the old student gym but transformed after undergoing a $2.3 million renovation in 1981. 

Information for this article was provided by the Dickinson College Archives.