I also like the "Cal Lambda" window you guys have.

Delta Sig's house is also on frat row, but ours is more old fashioned, we're the only house with these tight stone columns in front, and we have a huge balcony as opposed to a bunch of small ones. It's a lot more beautiful than "oops I joined"'s house across the street :)

DeltaSigStan, it seems that you don't really favor this particular house. Try to keep it down here, man!

Don't overbuild, but don't under-build either! You want to be competitive. Have a separate area to hang out in that you can shut the doors on when you need to show off the rest of the house. Plenty of parking and storage space. Think about what you would want to live in for 3-4 years----you'll need members to want to stay in the house to help get it paid for!!

Dude, make a motion to have a required number of years or semester that each member must live in the house. That will keep the house in good condition, because if people have to live there, they will take more pride in it, and see it as, wow I get to live in the house.

Good topic....I totally agree about a private chapter room...also, must have a billiard room and a large deck.....also, one thing that is standard at UGA, probably at others too, is a band room. Stage and everything, with access to deck or outside(fire codes). Nice touch, and works good for meetings and/or elections. Also, have a private ladies room downstairs...for obvious reasons. Hopefully, I did not just repeat what others have written...sorry did not read all posts.

Down where lol

Oh I love my new house.......if you're refering to the OopsIJoined's shack across the street, you'd have to know the whole story. Josh knows.

But yeah, Josh's house has their seal and the words Cal lambda (their chapter of course) stained onto the glass. It looks very beautiful as well.

All of the houses on frat row look awesome, and each have their own design and features that make them stand out from the rest. Sigma Nu has a column sort of thing with a patio on top, Sammy's entrance is in a huge pillar that serves as the foyer with the president's office on top. I haven't been in the other houses, but looking at it from the outside, it's great (once those lazy construction workers finish it)

Yeah that reminds me. Frat row should have been done in July. It's now Oct and we still havent officially been able to move into our house.

To quote an article in our newspaper written by John Fiske, a member of KA:

"Let's start with the construction workers. I've actually learned a lot about the construction business from this whole experience. It appears that all one has to do to become a construction worker is to start working around six or seven in the morning, unnecessarily wake everyone within a one-mile radius, stop working once everyone gets up out of bed, and then spend the rest of the day doing nothing at all, with the exception of occasionally moving a box or dropping a piece of wood. That's it! It almost makes me want to switch majors to construction theory."

Does anyone know of any websites where you can go to look at chapter houses?

Sigma Phi Epsilon has a page on their website that shows chapter homes and floor plans.


http://www.sigep.org/nhc/cffloorplans.asp

I love looking at other people's houses, seeing how unique and beautiful they are.

I love our house, it looks like a castle frome the outside and has light blue trim on it. I think it looks awesome at night!

The fraternity houses here are very big, half of them are on a long strip of a busy road through Iowa City, and the other half are on top of a big hill that's refered to as 'frat circle' because most of the houses are circling the block. The Sig Ep house here looks like a castle (and has the red door) but I've heard it's not as nice inside. The Phi Psi house here looks really cool--like the White House. A lot of the really really nice houses here are vacant or whatever because chapters (I assume closed). As for sorority houses, all houses are really nice, the ADPi's here have a really neat-o house, it was built in the 70's, so it's got like ultra-modern look to it with lots of glass and a wire frame spiral staircase.

Whenever I go to fraternity houses, if I use the bathrooms, I am grossed out because at one house the shower was moldy green with mushrooms and stuff. Keep them clean, I was at another house, and where the banister of the staircase meets the pole on the ground, there was a hole where everyone shoved their cigarette ashes and buts--grody! Also, there was garbage in the staircases.

*edited to add...* one really unique and cool thing about our house is that we have one of the oldest original Delta Zeta crests above our mantle to our fireplace. It's really pretty. We also have cool stained glass rose in our door.

Housing
 

First i waneted to say good luck on building your house. After seeing all the different houses on campus, its interesting to look at what sets certain houses apart. I would say for a frat house it is definitly important to have a patio or balcony of some sort. I live on a street with six frats and one other sorority. The houses that get the most attention are those that have the big balconies for hanging out on when its warm. Even if its in the front, like the alph sigs house here, i know a lot of people like to just chill and watch the night progress on the busy street we live on.
I know that some of the houses here are beautifull. The Psi U and the Theta houses are really gorgeous with stone and such.
I think one of the most important parts of a house is having a big room with a couch and a tv to hang out in. Also as far as size goes i would think it is important to see how many people you would want to live in and think to the future too. I know that pi phis were in two houses prior to the one we have now and then we had a house built just for pi phis at MSU. Our house can house 45 girls and right now we are three away from capacity. Usually there is a large demand to live in and not so many spots usually available. I know that when they first lived in our house there was not so much of a demand but try to think about maybe where your house can be ten, twenty years down the line (in our case almost a half a century!).
Also one thing that i noticed is a big deal with all houses is parking. Make sure you have a big parking lot. With our house only our EC can park in back and everyone else needs to find somewhere else to park which gives us only one option and that is to pay a lot of money to park across the street in the frats parking lots. So i suppose if you dont always fill your lot up the first couple of years you could do what our frats do and sell spots to people who need places to park. (then again parkign might not be an issue at your college)
Hope this helps some...... good luck!

i would be pissed if i couldn't live in the house because it was too full! i can't imagine WANTING to move out! it was the best part of school, and i think anyone that doesn't ever live in their house misses out BIGTIME!

also, a front porch is a must have on any fraternity house. although, a balcony or back deck would do if a front porch wasn't available.

Also, along with the front porches, almost all of the fraternity houses here have sand volleyball pits in their yards--a must for having people over.

I love our house too. It's not as HUGE as some of the houses, like Tri-Delt and Theta b/c we don't have the additions built on like they do - our house has, for the most part, been kept in it's original form since being built in the early 1940s. We have a fireplace and a baby grand piano, which I think adds such elegance and beauty to our chapter room :)

And yes, we do have one of only 3 remaining orginal crests displayed above our fireplace. We recieved it when we originally came to campus in 1913 - and it has been here ever since - almost 90 years :D

Things I love about our house....

-it doesnt look like a "more than a family" lives here house. It looks big from the outside, but when you get inside theres a normal sized livingroom, kitchen and bathroom and just 4 rooms downstairs. So you dont get this overwhemling "dorm" feel like some other greek houses Ive seen. Once youre upstairs you know that many more people live there.

-We have this gigantic "closet" downstairs known as Krugers. Its the basement from the origional house - complete with coal cellar ("the green door") Its a great place to store stuff. We have a storage part, and then the biggest part is a place for the old composites and paddles

-Our chapter room is a quiet place to study, hang out and talk, or stay overnight with guests (when you dont want to bother your roomie ;) ) We also use it for meetings, pinnings and sisterhoods sometimes.

-We have this gigantic mirror above the fireplace in the living room, for some reason this has to be one of my favorite things cos it lights up the room by reflecting the window light and makes the room bigger.

-Front and back porches, a gathering place for smokers and non smokers alike!

Definitely have very nice ladies restrooms available! In addition to having "restaurant-like" (great way to describe it!) facilities in the downstairs part of the house, it would be a great idea to have ladies restrooms and showers available upstairs in the living quarters so that guests of brothers won't have to trek downstairs in the middle of the night or carry all their stuff downstairs to get a shower (or worse have their boyfriends "clear out" the bathrooms upstairs for them).
Another suggestion is to have the house wired so that each roommate can have their own phone line. We had this available and it worked out much better than having friends call a line and not know which of two to four girls they would be getting. Also, have the house "wired for internet" (not sure of the correct terms) so that members can have computer access in their rooms. It also might help to have a nice study room in a quiet part of the house where there are computers and printers available and space for group or individual study.

Oh it's okay, he doesn't like Gamma Phi either, and he's proud to be in the Animal House, so let him be.