I've stayed in that house at Texas State University in San Marcos and I know something about it. It hasn't been the Pike house for years, and the Pikes didn't vandalize it. I would appreciate it if you would please correct that impression on the other website ("LiveJournal"?).
That was a magnificent fraternity house but it was monstrous, way too big for one chapter to manage. It was a hospital in World War I, and many of the soldiers wrote messages on the walls, preserved up until the 1990s. It served various functions over the years, and became the Pike house in the 1960s. One of the alumni of that chapter was President Lyndon Johnson (he was a member of the local fraternity that went Pike), and I believe he had something or other to do with them getting the house. It was not only huge, it also had an enormous front lawn. Actually, "lawn" doesn't do - it was like a meadow in front.
Sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s, the chapter built a more manageable, "clubhouse"-style home and sold the big house, or, perhaps they abandoned it. I don't know. Years of standing empty and enduring legions of bums and trespassers have worn it out and vandalized it.
Our chapter got kicked off for hazing, but we'll return to Texas State at some point not too far off. Housing won't be an issue, but we'll never go back to the big house. It held a lot of wonderful memories for a great chapter in its day. But please don't think the damage in those photos was done by the fraternity. Thanks.
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