May 15, 1924, Volume 5, Number 8

Housing Boom

The Paeonios Chapter finally established a chapter house, located at 1020 Houston St. Manhattan Kansas. The purchased house was no small hovel. It had been the previous residence of the President of the University, W. M. Jardine. It had been designed by the university architectural department, and had been recently remodeled. It sounds like a lovely place.

Is it still there? You bet it is! It doesn't look like it changed a lick.



On Page 6, we begin to see the first discussions of a real estate development being managed by the Mnesicles alumni. The alumni purchased 5 lots across from the Minnesota Stadium that was under construction at this time. The development is being called "Fraternity Court" and 2 of those lots were reported sold to the Sigma Phil Epsilon fraternity.



That must have been quite a party!



The Andronicus Chapter held it's spring formal at one of Los Angeles's lost landmarks - the Garden of Allah. It was located on the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights Boulevards, on what would now be noted as the eastern end of the Sunset Strip. Initially, the property began as a mansion, built by actress Alla Nazimova, and was notorious for wild parties. The property did not develop into a hotel until 1927, so the chapter may have had shared close quarters with the famous actress, who lived openly as a lesbian.



In the 1930's the Garden of Allah was a regular stomping ground for hollwood types looking for a good time, the most notable of which was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Unfortunately, it was torn down in 1959.



E-Bay alert!

At the above-mentioned party, the female attendees were given silver bracelets mounted with the fraternity crests. If you find one online, you know what to do...



This is not always easy...

On Page 5, the final paragraph of the Mnesicles update, shows evidence of the kind of confusion this project encounters from time to time.

"Milton John Anderson, '20, who was still single at the lsat report is employed by German & Jensen, Architects and engineers
of Duluth. Milton L. Anderson, '21 often his partner in
crime, is also single but is located in Los Angeles with an architectural
office."

After being brothers for three years, you'd think this crazy coincidence would have come up by now. Instead, i had to backtrack and separate the entries for the 2 men on their middle initials.. Initials, i might add, that are NOT terribly far away from in the alphabet OR the keyboard. Shame on me for making the assumption that the editors had made some typos. Goodness knows that they haven't always been perfect....

March 15, 1924, Volume 5, Number 6

10 years...
The Archi Staff are in a tizzy because in less than a month, the fraternity will be celebrating its 10th anniversary. Messages from such dignataries as Leo M. Bauer, Chandler C. Cohagen and Lorentz Schmidt send well wishes to the brotherhood in its current state, and waxes nostalgic for its infant days when we were a mere 2 interested parties. As of 1924, the fraternity has grown to 7 national chapters, and 1 soon to join the fray. I picture them each in a drafting smock late at night, carefully drafting these correspondence with fountain pens.

The Grand Council Directory
The bulk of this Archi consists of a directory of all members to-date. this is not the first of these directors to be published, but as someone who is painstakingly entering each name into a database, I can assure you that it's getting ever so long. I admit that it is pretty neat to look at the names and see their addresses. I find myself wondering if these places of residence are still there. So I took a random sample - 1 residence from each active chapter and entered it into google maps - here we go!

Anthemios - Adolf O. Budina: 618 10th St., Wilmette, IL ----BINGO!
Looks like it's still there. A house like this was likely built before 1924, and what a sweet little house it is too.

View Larger Map


Iktinos - Eugene D. Straight: 479 W. Willis Ave., Detroit, MI ----Hmmm..
For some reason google street view hasn't made it to Willis - and it's now being called Willis Street. It looks like the John C. Lodge freeway has been built on this site. Unfortunately, judging from the nearby interesection this is a blighted neighborhood.

Demetrios - Russell M. Krob: 1209 Hamlet Ave., Colmbus, OH ----DOH!
This is seriously the cutest neighborhood, with good old american four-square homes, built one after the other, except it appears that there's a vacant lot where brother Krob's used to be. You'll noticed that a house does comes up when you type in the 1209 but you can see the address number is not 1209. Well, at least you can get a sense of the neighborhood.

View Larger Map

Mnesicles - Howard F. Dunn: 1692 Princeton Ave., St. Paul, MN ----??
Darnit google! They haven't documented this neighborhood using streetview, but it appears that this house is still there. It appears to be a garden-style designed neighbohood, and he homes appear to be built in the late teens to early twenties. If it weren't for all the snow in the wintertime, I'd want to live in this neighborhood.

Kallikrates - W. Merle Brown: 810 Carter Road, Raleigh Court, Roanoake, VA ----So Close..
Once again, I am unable to find the exact house. I think that the homes of this area have been renumbered. I am able to verify the existance of a Carter Road, and this road is within a subdivision called Raleigh Court. According to Wikipedia, "the development of [Raleigh Court] reached its peak in the 1920's, so therefore the residences in this subdivision do fit into our time frame.

Andronicus - Paul E. Willhide: 1200 37th Pl., Los Angeles, CA ----SWEET!
The house appears to still be there. It's been severely remodeled, and currently houses a youth center, but the house is still there. The place is easily within walking distance from the USC Campus. No need to ride the red car.


View Larger Map

Paeonios - Lawrence Byers: 901 Carer Ave., Wichita, KS ---- Whew!
That took a bit of sleuthing - depending on what side of the street had the odd numbers, it was either this quaint little thing, or a PUD apartment complex (for shame). The house is located on a little peninsula of land surrounded by a river, and is not too far from a fantastic little place called the Castle Inn - it kind of makes me want to go to Kansas for the first time in my life.


View Larger Map

January 3, 1924, Special Edition

Yay!! Convention is On!!

The 9th Convention of Alpha Rho Chi was held at the Curtis Hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota

The image above is an image of the exterior of this hotel. Below is an image of the space in which our banquet was likely held.

This 1 page Archi is a special edition noting the immediate highlights of convention. In fact, if this issue was written in the middle of convention, considering the event was scheduled for January 2-4, 1924. The majority of the reporting is on the opening dinner dance, and is followed by items yet to be covered.

I wonder why they did this? Is this the closest the 1924 version of us had to instant messaging?

God Bless the Archi Staff to not only list all of the attendees, but also the ladies who accompanied them as their dates. It makes me wonder how each of these Lady Golden Gophers were assigned to each of our brothers. Were they matched up by height? Was there a lady-auction a la Pirates of Carribean? Why didn't Norman Palmquist of Paeonios get a date? Poor Norman.

We are also graced with the banquet menu, which was probably really fancy, but reminds me of an Anthemian Sunday Night Formal Dinner. In fact if we switched out the ice cream and cake or pie with "nilla wafers and pudding" it would be almost exactly the same.

Special thanks to Rick Jenkins in sleuthing out these photos.

November 15, 1923, Vol. 5, No. 2 Part 1

Expansion: 1920's Style.

The early attempts at expansion for this fraternity seems to be dominated by brothers of a certain chapter becoming faculty at another university. The "new" chapters at USC, UVA & KSU were all initiated by faculty members who were brothers at other chapters.
At this stage in the project, less than 10 years since the foundation of the fraternity, we have faculty planted at North Dakota Agricultural College, North Carolina State College, Washington State College (that's right.. in Pullman), Harvard University, Iowa State University & New York University. However, most interesting of all are the brothers who are teaching at the University of Texas in Austin (Raymond Everett, Iktinos,), and Oklahoma A & M College (Joseph J. Patterson, Anthemios, '17).

We have the benefit of knowing that both of these chapters were established in 1925, and on page 3 of this issue, there's an indication that a chapter may be in the works at Texas. Knowing that Cass Gilbert was the master planner at this university and a Master Architect during this time period puts it all into deeper perspective.

For the Betterment...

A curious editorial on page 4 of this issue notes that many of our chapters have been planning events on the Sabbath. What's worse is, they're planning events on Saturday nights that go into the wee hours of the morning, therefore also violating the Sabbath. Tsk Tsk.
No disrespect from me, of course, for any brother or person who is observant of their particular sabbath. I would hate for anyone to sully the fair name of Alpha Rho Chi by holding events on the Sabbath. And Kudos to Mnesicles for instead holding their initiations and "oriental night" on one of the "other 6 days of the week."

oh sweet irony.

March 15, 1923, Vol. 4, No. 5

If you're currently a pledge in a colony of Alpha Rho Chi (I'm looking your way, Severus), and you think you're going to put out the most bang-up, boss, swell, radical, bitchin, kick-ass petition for affiliation, you best be looking at the submission that Paeonios put together back in 1923.

Not ONLY did they include a dozen 7x11 inch views of the campus, individual pictures of all the petitioning members, and endorsements from the President of the School, the Dean of Engineering, the head of the Intra-Fraternity Council at the university, the Registrar and the Head of the Architectural Department, they also bound the thing in a soft, brown undressed leather cover, which bore the gold seal of the Kansas State Agricultural college.

The postage on that baby? $2.00. In today's dollars, that would be $24.11

I wonder whatever happened to that petition, described as a "masterpiece" by the Archi Editors.

In Other News..

There is a lovely response to the Archi Editors from an Alumnus, inquiring about an article in a previous issue:

"In the last issue of the Archi, there was considerable mention of the Alumni Association taken up at the convention. However there was nothing said of its purpose, development or benefit. It is the opinion of the members of the Chicago Alumni Chapter than an article should be published in the Archi giving some information regarding this issue."

Let this serve as a warning to you, my fellow brothers - people who stick their necks out like that end up getting elected Worthy Grand Architect. You see, the letter was signed by a G. A. Whitten. Yes, That would be future WGA, Silver Medal Recipient, and namesake of our annual Scholastic Achievement Award, George A. "So" Whitten.