Unique things about your chapter house
 

My chapter is currently in the process of designing and preparing to build a house. What features do ya'll like to see in chapter houses? What has worked well for you, what is bad... What would you change about yours if you could?

Don't make it house too many members (make it about equal to other chapters on your campus), or people will be pissed they don't get to move out when they are juniors and seniors... especially when all their friends in other chapters are moving into apartments.

We had TWO chapter houses, they were right next door to each other. I loved the butler pantry in the brown house and at the white house I loved the wooden spiral staircase.
I get to see them both this weekend!

we just built a new house...but its in the new fraternity row complex so it's not like your typical fraternity house. one thing i really like about our house is the mini balconys everywhere. they open the place up, and we can yell down to the street when there are concerts at cox arena (its directly infront of us).

Even though we weren't supposed to be up there, my favorite part of my house was the roof...off our room, there was this one large flat part and we'd go out there and study or hang out. Our house was in the ghetto, basically, so it wouldn't be the safest thing to be outside at night sitting around. With the roof, we could all be outside when it was 100 degrees inside and not have to worry about anything. I'd highly recommend a large balcony, if it's doable. :)

We also had this HUGE basement which we couldn't use because of fire codes. We all thought it would be nice to have a big room downstairs where we could have the TV and couches and so on to hang out in so we wouldn't have to use the chapter room for that. It would've kept the chapter room much nicer and would've had room for more people to sit comfortably. Instead, it just got piled with boxes and random crap.

Does Sigma Nu have "signature" on chapter houses? Like, Sig Eps with red doors, or FIJI with purple doors ... If so, I suggest to have the signature on the structure.
As Theta Delta Chi Charges prior 1930s, we have pillars in front of our structures. We try to get the tradition back.

Oh, as far as the circulation goes, one thing I notice: new structures always have concrete walls, stairways at the side(s) of the house. Our house was built in 1909, way before the new trend took over, so our staircase is in the middle of our house. Central stairways?
Also we have wall panel interior instead of concrete (more hommie this way!).
Good luck on the project. PM me if you need more help (I am a design major).

I don't know about this, I think it depends on the overall attitudes of your campus. Here, most people want to live in as many years as possible (obviously there are some people who choose to live out), and the probably we are currently having is having to tell people that they must live out. I think that you shouldn't have to force initiated members to live in, unless you are having problems paying for rent, utilities, food while keeping prices proportional to those on campus and the dorms (all houses at Nebraska are cheaper to live in than the dorms). Size also depends on whether or not you have pledges live in. It can be smaller if you have members of only 3 classes live in instead of 4.

Other things to think about, make sure there is a more formal living room . We have one with a piano and a nice ensemble of furniture and it's used often when waiting to go to a party. Also a lot of the guys play the piano and it isn't uncommon to walk down the stairs to a variety of different songs.

Another thing is a big deck, great for barbeques and just hanging out. I'd also reccomend a nice rec room. We've got one with a pool table, a foosball table, stereo (monster speakers - not surround sound), couches, tv/dvd/vcr. It's usually a place to just hang out and nice to hang out with girls up there.

Make sure you have a really nice womens restroom...make it like one you might find in a really nice resteraunt. Ours has chairs, mirrors, counters for applying make up as well as the normal expectations and most girls agree it is the nicest out of any of the fraternities. Make sure yours is also well stocked with toilet paper always...

The biggest reccomendation I can make is to make sure daily cleaning is done. The way we do this is that our pledges have duties, nothing hard - just about a 10 minute cleanup job that must be done everyday and then be signed off by an active. It might be cleaning a bathroom, cleaning the dining room, or making sure the deck is free of debris. They rotate through the duties during pledge semester and then in second semester (we never have a spring pledge class) they get to choose which duty they will have for the entire semester and this is done in order of roll number. Fines are assessed for duties that are not done. The overall effect is that everyone begins to feel pride in where they are living because they are doing their part, and that pride carries on for the next 3 years. Further, girls in general notice how clean the house is and will almost always make comments about it which further inspires pride in the house. There is also something to be said about a clean house in the eyes of PNM during rush and whenever parents come over.

Kevin, good luck on building a new house! We are in the process of trying to fdo the same!

Pledges cleaning the house is hazing by Natioanl Standards! Sucks but TRUE!

Our House built in 1895 and first house in Pittsburg, Ks to have electricity! It is dead, tired, and a hazard!

1. House x amount depending on track record. Do Not Overbuild, you will regret it.

2. After people live in the house for a while, especially Jr/Sr. want to have their on place! Make it so people want to live there, a privilage as it were.

3. Do not be a resturant, cooking facillities, big expense. Most schools have food plans. Maybe have catered meal plan?

4. Have all of the amenities, cable access, phone, and plenty of plug ins!

4. Party/ Meeting room big enuff for both, Basement, eating if catered food.

5. Formal Room and casual room on first floor.

6. Nice restrooms for the ladies! A Big Bug Of Mine!:mad:

7. Be very competative with school and local rents! Houses usually cheaper.

8. Do A Big Deck. More goes on there when the weather is nice!!!!!! Put at rear of house so citizens cannot see a bunch of Greeks acting stupid and giving a bad impression.

9. New Houses will not have gang showers, dormmer rooms. All like the little privacy as more schools are going to suites and private bathrooms. We also have to do the same at more expense.

Well, I just gave you the defenitive plan for a new house! Hope it floats!!!!!!!!!!!!!



:)

Some great suggestions! Keep them coming!

dude, that rocks!! I am housing chair and house manager so PM me if you need specific advise on how to find/build/run your house. Get a big living room to be your chapter room for composite, pledge class paddles etc. Then try for a different tv room.

I've only been in 2 other Sigma Nu houses. Both have chapter rooms that only brothers are allowed into or candidates for certain purposes. So we're planning on a chapter room like that somewhere.

One really good idea that is floating around our chapter is to model our house after a historic home in town. There is an old Civil War home in Murfreesboro called the Oakland mansion, that a few of us think it would be cool to use as a model for our fraternity house. It's a great house and would serve use perfectly, it would cut out a lot of the planning we would have to do, and it would be good PR for us within the community.

I've seen two Sigma Nu houses, the one here at Akron (Kappa Lambda chapter) and the one at Mount Union (Beta Iota chapter). Both houses are extremely nice. Akron is more modern and quite big. The most interesting thing about their house is the rubber tree in the middle of the house. The house was built a "hole" in the middle so when you go upstairs, you can look over the side of the wall and look downstairs (pretty much into the tree) it's a cool balcony type effect. Mount Union's house is very classic. It is, I believe, the oldest house at Mount? It's just gorgeous that I can't even explain it. I believe there are 4 floors and right when you walk in the front doors, there is a staircase to the front, the chapter room to the right, and the "dance floor" area and living room to the left. There is a balcony off of the living room area which is very cool. Just a couple ideas....

I'm getting good ideas out of this so I'm going to bump it back up to the top:D

It would be better off if you make this room hidden, so no one else would know if this room exist. Use the entrering ritual in order to get into the room.

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.

My house was originally built by a Pulitzer Prize winning author- it's on the town's historic tour. It's a little weird inside- the first floor bedrooms were originally the study, the den, and the kitchen. My bedroom was the nursery. There're pics here: http://www.alphataugamma.org/118_sunset_avenue.htm

Ignore the DC letters- we still aren't done painting over everything.

bump

Unique about our chapter house......
 

It's invisible!! :D :D :D

Re: Unique about our chapter house......
 

Mine too! All sororites here live in one dorm, and the interesting thing about it is that it's haunted. Here's a story about it from a couple weeks ago...

Roberta Ghost Story

And guess which room I'm living in this year...the one where the girl felt the ghost holding her down! :eek: :eek: I haven't had anything like that happen, just little stuff that could probably be explained some other way.

The fraternity houses here are for the most part really nice and/or unique, and have been moving/rebuilding a lot in the past couple years. TKE , SigEp (their house is on the SigEp link posted earlier ), and Phi Sig have all built since 1999, Delta Chi's house is on the national historic register and Ag Rho's just moved into a different old hotel this year. AKL's are starting to talk about rebuilding, Kappa Sigs bought their first house this year (it's kinda small but you have to start somewhere), and Delta Sig is in a house just right for them now.

And the fraternities thinking about building PLEASE include these two things! TKE here has these two things and the other fraternities don't (at least to my knowledge), and it makes a big difference. Someone else said something about them earlier, but they really are essential!

*each room has their own phone line...so messages actually get to the guys

*a CLEAN women's restroom or have sueite (sp?) rooms where two rooms share a bathroom...so girls have to hover the toilet (hey you never know what other girls hang around there sometimes)!

Do not overbuild, everyone is right. Our frats are having a hard time filling, it is better to have overflow, than to be giving bids to fill.
Ok, bathrooms are so important! We have the toilet seperate from the shower so both can be used at the same time. I guess if you have large common baths that isn't necessary, but our downstairs is so much nicer cause we can use both simultaneously and during parties we can lock the shower off so people can't use it. (I know that sounds bad.)
Also, hard wood floors. They last longer and are much prettier. You can always through a tarp down during a party if you need to protect it.
Storage! We have so little and what we do have is scattered everywhere. Good storage is so important.
Good Luck!

Tau Love,
Lil E

We're planning on some pretty heavy-duty construction. An alum of another chapter that's on our house corporation owns an airport construction company. He has the hookup on construction materials. We're going to spend a little more on construction and build a quality house. I can't remember what it's called but it's cement-like. But smooth. Our Oklahoma University chapter actually has a truckload of sand dumped in their living room once a year for a party and it cleans up just fine. Can't remember what it's called though.