1872 Alpha Delta Phi Hall on north side of East Wheelock St. (postcard).

    Fraternal organizations, rooted in the Englightenment society-founding boom that gave us national language institutes and scientific societies, are exemplified in the U.S. by such diverse groups as the original Ku Klux Klan, the Odd Fellows, and college fraternities. Such societies are private, self-perpetuating organizations. Though their purpose is social interaction rather than secrecy per se, they do possess some degree of secrecy, protecting as little as the text of a meeting ritual or as much as the identities of the members themselves.

    Recent years have seen a growth in the study of the material culture of fraternal organizations, particulary the archetypal secret society, the Freemasons. But little attention has been devoted to the organizations' primary material creation, the meeting hall.¹ This building type is broad enough to include lodges, meeting halls, tombs, and houses -- for the organizations, such structures provide secure spaces for meeting and occasionally for socializing and living. They also represent the society in the public arena and advertise its presence. After all, what cachet does a secret society hold if its existence is not widely known?

    On the college campus, fraternity buildings are a uniquely American representation of the joining spirit, and they are crucial to an understanding of the organizations they represent. These buildings are also a significant architectural element of the campus, representing a remarkable use of alumni resources and remaining the largest privately-owned enclaves on most college campi. Society buildings also often outlive the organizations they contain; the buildings that stand today are not inevitable but come from the concrete intentions of past agents, builders who aimed to represent things about themselves to their organizations and the world. And the uses to which students continue to put these spaces is still the subject of debate at all levels of the university.

    This paper traces the evolution of society buildings at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., U.S.A., proposing that a shift in iconography took place at the turn of the century in which societies abandoned the tradition of mysterious meeting-places and took up a new grandly-scaled domestic paradigm. This second mode only reached its full fruition in the 1920s when societies built their second generation of houses, this time in brick. Several broad chronological themes can help us see the buildings in some context: starting with the literary societies (I), the paper moves to the early secret societies or Greek-letter fraternities as they modified the form of their predecessors (II). The following topics are then taken up in turn and deal most heavily with the architecture: the earliest freestanding society halls beginning in 1860 (III), the class societies that continued the abandoned hall tradition (IV), the mass migration to houses beginning in the 1890s (V), and the change that occurred when the fraternities moved into brick houses in the 1920s (VI). The paper ends with an assessment of society construction in the last forty years and notes that changes have been mainly institutional and organizational rather than physical (Conclusion).

I. Literary Societies 1783-1870 | Long-lived but left little
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I. Literary Societies 1783-1870
	1.	Reconstruction of southeast corner of the Green in 1775 showing original buildings of Dartmouth (author, after Aldren A. Watson's 1964 reconstruction in Ralph Nading Hill, College on the Hill [Hanover: Dartmouth College, 1964], 41).
	2.	1784-1791 Dartmouth Hall (postcard).
	3.	Bookplates of the literary societies (Williamson, 10)
II. Greek-Letter Societies 1841-1860
III. Greek-Letter Societies 1860-1894
	4.	East side of Main Street looking north, showing 1887 Bridgman Block (postcard).
	5a.	1856 Skull & Bones Tomb, Yale College, New Haven, Ct., c.1903-15 (Library of Congress, American Memory).
	5b.	1856 Skull & Bones Tomb, Yale College, New Haven, Ct., 2004 (author).
	6.	1860 Kappa Kappa Kappa Hall on east side of College St., shown when owned by Dragon (Aleertype Co. [Brooklyn], "Dartmouth College" [souvenir postcard book] [Hanover: The College Bookstore, (c.1920)]).
	7.	1872 Alpha Delta Phi Hall on north side of East Wheelock St. (postcard).
	8.	1877 Temple of Delta Kappa Epsilon at Colgate Univ., Hamilton, N.Y. (Delta Kappa Epsilon at Colgate University).
	8b.	1878 Shant of Delta Kappa Epsilon at Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. (Delta Kappa Epsilon at the University of Michigan).
	9a.	1888 Cloister, Yale Sheffield Scientific School, New Haven, Ct., c.1900-10 ("[New Haven, Conn., Colister [sic] Fraternity House, Yale]," Detroit Publishing Co. no. 039340, Library of Congress, American Memory).
	9b.	1888 Cloister, Yale Sheffield Scientific School, New Haven, Ct., 2004 (author).
	9c.	1901 Book & Snake Temple, Yale Sheffield Scientific School, New Haven, Ct., 2004 (author).
	10.	c.1880s St. Anthony's Hall, Delta Psi Fraternity, Yale Sheffield Scientific School, New Haven, Ct., c.1900-15 ("Delta Psi fraternity house, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.," Detroit Publishing Co. no. 039338, Library of Congress, American Memory).
IV. Class Societies 1854-1931
	11a.	1870 Scroll & Key Tomb, Yale College, New Haven, Ct., c. 1901 ("Scroll and Key fraternity house, Yale College," Detroit Publishing Co. no. 013679, Library of Congress, American Memory).
	11b.	1870 Scroll & Key Tomb, Yale College, New Haven, Ct., 2004 (author).
	12a.	1890 Wolf's Head Tomb, Yale College, New Haven, Ct., c.1901 ("Wolf's Head fraternity house, Yale College," Detroit Publishing Co. no. 013680, Library of Congress, American Memory).
	12b.	1890 Wolf's Head Tomb, Yale College, New Haven, Ct., 2004 (author).
	13.	1903 Sphinx Tomb on north side of East Wheelock St. (postcard).
	14.	1846 Medical College of Richmond/Egyptian Building, Richmond, Va. (author).
	15.	Dragon Hall/former Kappa Kappa Kappa Hall, east side of College St., as remodeled in 1917 by Dragon (Aleertype Co.).
	16.	1823 Alden House at 1 S. Main St. as occupied by Casque & Gauntlet in 1893 (postcard).
V. Greek-Letter Societies 1894-1920
	17.	1868-70 Parker House at 22 N. Main St. as occupied by Kappa Kappa Kappa, view to the northwest (Barrett, 83).
	17a.	1868-70 Parker House at 22 N. Main St. as occupied by Kappa Kappa Kappa, view to the northwest (postcard).
	18.	1887 former Catholic Church on East South St., once occupied by Pi Lambda Phi (author).
	19.	1902 Phi Delta Theta/Phi Delta Alpha House on the north side of Webster Ave. (Dartmouth College Library).
	20.	1893 Massachusetts State Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago ("State Buildings," The Vanished City, [1893]).
	21.	Beta Theta Pi House on the north side of Sanborn Lane, today Fairbanks South/Tucker Foundation (postcard).
	22.	1907-08 Psi Upsilon House on the north side of West Wheelock St. (postcard).
	23.	Map of Webster Ave. in 1915 (author, after Sanborn map).
	24.	1911-12 Sigma Chi House on the north side of Webster Ave. (postcard).
	25.	1835 Stephen Brown House on School St. as occupied by Phi Psi/Panarchy c.1902 (postcard).
	26.	1842 Dewey House at 27 North Main St. as occupied by Sigma Nu in 1911 (postcard).
	27.	1795 Brown/Unity House as occupied by Chi Phi in 1903 (postcard).
	28.	The c.1840 Brewster House on the eastern corner of West Wheelock and School Streets as occupied by Phi Gamma Delta in 1907 (postcard).
	29.	1898-99 Ridge House as occupied by Delta Delta Delta c.1994-95 (author).
	30.	Map of site of Webster Ave. in 1894 (author, after Sanborn map).
VI. Greek-Letter Societies 1920-1940
	31.	1920s Sigma Alpha Epsilon House on the northern corner of College and Elm Streets ("Dartmouth College , exterior of college building, Hanover, NH," Harvard GSD lantern slide 19043, Library of Congress, American Memory).
	32.	1928 Chi Phi/Chi Heorot House on the north side of East Wheelock St. (postcard).
	33.	1936-37 Phi Gamma Delta/Phoenix [fraternity] as occupied by Sigma Kappa/Sigma Delta c.1978-82 (postcard).
	34.	1932 Sigma Chi/Tabard House on the north side of Webster Ave. (postcard).
	35.	1937 Kappa Sigma/Chi Gamma Epsilon House on the north side of Webster Ave. (postcard).
	36.	Map of Webster Ave. in 1937 (author, after Sanborn map).
	37.	1925 Sigma Nu House on the north side of Webster Ave. (Barrett, 89).
	38.	Entrance Front of the 1896 Robert W. Cumming House, Newark, N.J. by McKim, Mead & White (McKim, et. al., plate 79).
Conclusion: Societies Today
	39.	1896 W.M. Patten House on the north side of Webster Ave. as occupied by Epsilon Kappa Theta c.1992 (author).
	40.	1896 Fred P. Emery House on the north side of Webster Ave. as ocupied by Alpha Chi Rho/Alpha between 1965 and 1961 (author).
	41.	1996 Dragon Hall on the east side of College St. in College Park under construction (author).
	42.	1996 Dragon Hall on the east side of College St. in College Park (author).
	43.	1931 Dragon Hall on the north side of Elm St., demolished ca. 1996 (author).

I. Literary Societies 1783-1870 | Long-lived but left little
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