PKT25: Touring the House, Part 2: Main Floor Bedrooms
On the first leg of our tour we walked around the outside of the Phi Kappa Theta house. Now that we're standing back on the front sidewalk next to Magnolia Drive, let's walk up to the front porch and stand in front of the main door. It's got a giant wooden representation of the seal of Phi Kappa Theta. Or maybe the logo? I forget the exact term, but some long ago brother or alumnus or friend made it and it's been hanging on the door ever since.
To the right of the main door is a phone built into the brickwork. When I arrived at Case, almost nobody had a cell phone yet. A guy in my quad named Kipton was the first person my age I met who had a cell phone, and it wasn't until my last year of college that they started to become particularly common. Instead, each dorm room had a phone number, and each person assigned to that number had a password they could use to dial long distance so that the university didn't have to worry about who was paying for what calls. The fraternity house was officially student housing and used the same system, with the last four numbers being PKT(X) [758(x)] ranging from PKT1 to PKT9 or so.
Now, when you visited your friends in other dorms back in 1996, there was a phone outside the dorm that you could use to call up to your friends room so they could let you in. This assumed of course that you hadn't hacked the keycard system (our student IDs served as keycards) and couldn't let yourself in, which was was pretty common. The fraternity house didn't have an exterior phone when I was a freshman, and used real keys instead of keycards. While you could certainly ring the doorbell and someone would let you in most of the time, we also had two guys who worked more or less full-time for the networking contractor that supported the university. As a result, somewhere along the way we got an exterior phone installed with the number PKT0 that could be used to call up to the rooms from outside. It also had a received in the main lobby. I suspect it was obsolete within 5 years, if that. When I was summer house manager in 2000 I started off explaining to prospective tenants the that we used the same room # system as the dorms, but Patrick pointed out to me everyone had cell phones. It's entirely possible that all those phones, including the exterior PKT0 number are now completely disconnected, since I literally can't fathom a freshman showing up without a cell phone nowadays.
After you walked in the door there was a little tiny airlock to another door. This area contained the wall panel for even more expensive electronics that were installed in either my freshman or sophomore year. At that time we got an integrated fire alarm system installed in the main house. I don't recall if the impetus was lower insurance rates or a new requirement of being officially university housing, but in any event we got a fancy fire alarm system more or less like the dorms installed and the control panel was in the wall of this airlock area.
At last, we are now in the main hallway on the first floor, sometimes referred to as the lobby. From here:
- To the immediate left, french doors led to the Red Room, our (more) formal living room.
- To the immediate right, french doors led to the Study Room. Sometimes studying even happened there.
- To the back left, more french doors led to the Chapter Room, which hosted our chapter meetings on Sunday nights, dinner Sunday nights through Thursday nights, and served as the dance floor for our parties 2-3 times a semester. Off of the chapter room was a bedroom called The Parlor and the kitchen, which doubled as the DJ booth for parties.
- To the medium right was the main staircase going up to the second floor.
- To the back right was a hallway that led past the stereo closet and a bedroom called The Bakery to the side entrance off the driveway. The hallway then wrapped past a half bathroom and down a staircase to the basement.
- Both the Chapter Room and the Red Room had french doors leading outside to the porch, although I can probably count on one hand the number of times I saw anyone open the Red Room doors. There was also another set of french doors connecting the Chapter Room and the Red Room. If you liked french doors, the first floor of the Phi Kappa Theta house was a veritable wonderland.
I'll go into more detail about the main hallway and other common areas in a future post. For now, let's talk about the two bedrooms. Each bedroom in the Phi Kappa Theta house had been named via a sign over the door. It's always been unclear when precisely this happened (alumni from the 1970s didn't remember them existing). Whether they were the product of a planned vote by the house or whether one rogue brother with a router did it all himself is equally unclear.
In any event, The Bakery was the largest and arguably the nicest bedroom in the house. It featured an attached full bathroom, more than enough room for multiple beds and a real closet, which combined with the lack of stairs was usually more than enough for someone to put up with the noise of the main hallway and the need to answer the doorbell. The name The Bakery came from an extremely large piece of glassware in that closet which wasn't really a bong but probably served the purpose well enough. There were surprisingly few pot smokers in the house when I was an active so I don't recall it being used.
The other first floor bedroom was The Parlor, which shared the phone number PKT2 (I think) with The Bakery. The Parlor was a pretty substantially sized bedroom room right off of the chapter room. When I was a pledge, it featured a half bathroom, but later on we completely remodeled the kitchen and the half bathroom went away and became part of the kitchen instead. The ceiling leaked off and on until the porch above it (off a room called "The Greenhouse") was fixed in 2000 or so but the main problems with living in the Parlor were:
- It was right next to the Chapter Room, so during normal hours it was loud and during a party it was incredibly loud.
- It was right next to the kitchen, so it smelled like cooking for several hours five days a week.
- If the door was open, people stuck their head in to say hello every time they came through, which was often since it was next to the Chapter Room.
- The closest showers were even in the basement or on the second floor, so you had to walk across the Chapter room and the main hallway and either up or down a flight of stairs to get the shower and back.
No room in the house was perfect, although The Bakery probably came closest if you were able to get it as a single or even a double, as I was my last summer in the house when I shared it with Steve. The Parlor was way down the list of the rooms I'd prefer to stay in, and I never slept there.
Anyway, now that we've covered some basics, next time we'll talk about the public areas on the first floor.
To the right of the main door is a phone built into the brickwork. When I arrived at Case, almost nobody had a cell phone yet. A guy in my quad named Kipton was the first person my age I met who had a cell phone, and it wasn't until my last year of college that they started to become particularly common. Instead, each dorm room had a phone number, and each person assigned to that number had a password they could use to dial long distance so that the university didn't have to worry about who was paying for what calls. The fraternity house was officially student housing and used the same system, with the last four numbers being PKT(X) [758(x)] ranging from PKT1 to PKT9 or so.
Now, when you visited your friends in other dorms back in 1996, there was a phone outside the dorm that you could use to call up to your friends room so they could let you in. This assumed of course that you hadn't hacked the keycard system (our student IDs served as keycards) and couldn't let yourself in, which was was pretty common. The fraternity house didn't have an exterior phone when I was a freshman, and used real keys instead of keycards. While you could certainly ring the doorbell and someone would let you in most of the time, we also had two guys who worked more or less full-time for the networking contractor that supported the university. As a result, somewhere along the way we got an exterior phone installed with the number PKT0 that could be used to call up to the rooms from outside. It also had a received in the main lobby. I suspect it was obsolete within 5 years, if that. When I was summer house manager in 2000 I started off explaining to prospective tenants the that we used the same room # system as the dorms, but Patrick pointed out to me everyone had cell phones. It's entirely possible that all those phones, including the exterior PKT0 number are now completely disconnected, since I literally can't fathom a freshman showing up without a cell phone nowadays.
After you walked in the door there was a little tiny airlock to another door. This area contained the wall panel for even more expensive electronics that were installed in either my freshman or sophomore year. At that time we got an integrated fire alarm system installed in the main house. I don't recall if the impetus was lower insurance rates or a new requirement of being officially university housing, but in any event we got a fancy fire alarm system more or less like the dorms installed and the control panel was in the wall of this airlock area.
At last, we are now in the main hallway on the first floor, sometimes referred to as the lobby. From here:
- To the immediate left, french doors led to the Red Room, our (more) formal living room.
- To the immediate right, french doors led to the Study Room. Sometimes studying even happened there.
- To the back left, more french doors led to the Chapter Room, which hosted our chapter meetings on Sunday nights, dinner Sunday nights through Thursday nights, and served as the dance floor for our parties 2-3 times a semester. Off of the chapter room was a bedroom called The Parlor and the kitchen, which doubled as the DJ booth for parties.
- To the medium right was the main staircase going up to the second floor.
- To the back right was a hallway that led past the stereo closet and a bedroom called The Bakery to the side entrance off the driveway. The hallway then wrapped past a half bathroom and down a staircase to the basement.
- Both the Chapter Room and the Red Room had french doors leading outside to the porch, although I can probably count on one hand the number of times I saw anyone open the Red Room doors. There was also another set of french doors connecting the Chapter Room and the Red Room. If you liked french doors, the first floor of the Phi Kappa Theta house was a veritable wonderland.
I'll go into more detail about the main hallway and other common areas in a future post. For now, let's talk about the two bedrooms. Each bedroom in the Phi Kappa Theta house had been named via a sign over the door. It's always been unclear when precisely this happened (alumni from the 1970s didn't remember them existing). Whether they were the product of a planned vote by the house or whether one rogue brother with a router did it all himself is equally unclear.
In any event, The Bakery was the largest and arguably the nicest bedroom in the house. It featured an attached full bathroom, more than enough room for multiple beds and a real closet, which combined with the lack of stairs was usually more than enough for someone to put up with the noise of the main hallway and the need to answer the doorbell. The name The Bakery came from an extremely large piece of glassware in that closet which wasn't really a bong but probably served the purpose well enough. There were surprisingly few pot smokers in the house when I was an active so I don't recall it being used.
The other first floor bedroom was The Parlor, which shared the phone number PKT2 (I think) with The Bakery. The Parlor was a pretty substantially sized bedroom room right off of the chapter room. When I was a pledge, it featured a half bathroom, but later on we completely remodeled the kitchen and the half bathroom went away and became part of the kitchen instead. The ceiling leaked off and on until the porch above it (off a room called "The Greenhouse") was fixed in 2000 or so but the main problems with living in the Parlor were:
- It was right next to the Chapter Room, so during normal hours it was loud and during a party it was incredibly loud.
- It was right next to the kitchen, so it smelled like cooking for several hours five days a week.
- If the door was open, people stuck their head in to say hello every time they came through, which was often since it was next to the Chapter Room.
- The closest showers were even in the basement or on the second floor, so you had to walk across the Chapter room and the main hallway and either up or down a flight of stairs to get the shower and back.
No room in the house was perfect, although The Bakery probably came closest if you were able to get it as a single or even a double, as I was my last summer in the house when I shared it with Steve. The Parlor was way down the list of the rooms I'd prefer to stay in, and I never slept there.
Anyway, now that we've covered some basics, next time we'll talk about the public areas on the first floor.