Ha. I see an FSUPhi beat me to it. We have a long standing good-natured rivalry, and both of us just built new houses. The reason the cost for houses of this size may seem low (Pike cost $4.5 million; Phi Delt $4 million ++) is because there was little or no land costs for the fraternities, and the University built the infrastructure and provided 100 parking places per house. The chapters had to pay very litte of the cost; we could put all our money into bricks & mortar.
Pike, Phi Delt and Lambda Chi just finished building new houses. Sig Ep and ATO will break ground soon. All five will be more or less the same size. Phi Delt built three unconnected buildings. If they house 66 men then they have the largest house capacity. Website:
http://www.fsuphidelt.org/index.asp LXA built two unconnected houses. Website:
http://www.lxafsu.com/
Pike built one enormous 40,000 square foot house all under one roof. It houses 60 men. Website:
http://www.fsupikes.com/
the Pike house is the largest fraternity house in the nation under one roof. It's possible that Phi Delt has the largest fraternity house in the nation under three roofs.
Rush was great this fall. All three of us pledged between 45-60 men each.
Couple of other points brought up previously in this thread:
1. About Pike being the largest fraternity in the nation...
It's been published before, but: SAE has more total initiates; Sig Ep has the most undergraduates in a given year; TKE has the most chapters; Phi Kappa Psi has the alrgest endowment; Pike has the largest average chapter size among all fraternities, and has had that for twenty years or more.
All of this information is inconsequential because it discounts the strength of great fraternities like, well, Phi Delt, Beta Theta Pi, Sigma Chi and many others.
2. Sig Ep house at Mississippi State is the largest fraternity house in mississippi. Since 1960 the Pikes house there had that distinction. When the Sig Eps built their new house the deliberately built it one square foot larger.