HOUSE TOUR . VI
(The Main Floor:
the Kitchen & Minnie's Bathroom)

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The KITCHEN

[More pictures to come]

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The Pantry
Until the mid-1960s there was an abandoned dumb waiter
going from this pantry down to the basement party room,

which had originally been the House's kitchen.

To-day's kitchen had then been a way-station serving area

to which the food was brought before given out in the adjoining dining room.

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MINNIE'S BATHROOM

 


The door to Minnie's Bathroom
from the Harry Spraker Library.
This room was a bathroom until the late 1960s,
when it was de-commissioned after pipes froze and burst too many times
due to their running along the House's very poorly insulated north wall.
It was then for several decades rented as a file room
to the Fraternity's National Board of Governors,
which kept its archives there in six green metal file cabinets.
Since 1993 it has been a bedroom,
inhabited by the most budget-conscious of the House's residents.

This room got its name from the chapter's last maid.
From the early 1940s to the late 1950s the chapter employed
a woman named Celestial from the Dominican Republic.
When she retired a young and spirited replacement named Evelyn
took on the job of keeping the House's rooms clean and neat.
Evelyn's boy friend, however, looked askance at her having to deal
with a house full of randy adolescents and insisted she quit.
In the summer of 1964 Acting House Manager Bro. Richard W. Coughenour, Al-'62,
interviewed the two applicants to succeed Evelyn.
One was a 22 year-old Danish woman, the other the linebacker-sized
Minnie Lee Gardner.
The bathroom received its name because this is where each weekday
she would change into her maid's uniform.
Many are the stories of Minnie and the brothers.
She retired ca. 1969
but in her honor the room retains her name.
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[More pictures to come]

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Curious about the history of 3401 Prospect Street? Ever wonder what the Prussian Minister
thought of living there? Click here for a History of the Lot and Building.
Click here for Photographs of Prior Alpha Chapter Houses.

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