List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduate dormitories

This is a list of the undergraduate dorms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Baker House

Detail of Baker House facade onto the Charles River.

Baker House, located at 362 Memorial Drive, is a co-ed dormitory at MIT designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in 1947-1948 and built in 1949. Its distinctive design has an undulating shape which allows most rooms a view of the Charles River, and gives many of the rooms a wedge layout. The dining hall features a 'moon garden' roof that is also very distinctive. Aalto also designed furniture for the rooms. Baker House was renovated by MIT for its fiftieth anniversary, modernizing the plumbing, telecommunications, and electrical systems and removing some of the interior changes made over the years that were not in Aalto's original design.

Baker's dining halls are open to all MIT students every evening.

Dropping a piano from the roof is an annual tradition. Notable Baker House alumni include Kenneth Olsen (Electrical Engineering, 1950), inventor of magnetic core memory and co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation; Amar Bose (Electrical Engineering, 1951), founder of the Bose Corporation and inventor of numerous audio technologies; Alan Guth (Physics, 1968), astrophysicist and professor of physics at MIT; Gerry Sussman (Mathematics, 1968); Geoffrey A. Landis (physics, Electrical Engineering, 1980), NASA scientist and science fiction writer; Cady Coleman (1983), NASA Astronaut; Wesley Bush (1983), CEO, Northrop Grumman; Warren Madden (1985), Weather Channel meterorologist; Charles Korsmo (Physics, 2000), actor in movies such as Hook and Can't Hardly Wait; and Ed Miller, noted poker authority. In the summer of 2009, Baker House alumni held a reunion to celebrate Baker's 60th Anniversary.

Bexley Hall

Bexley Hall in the snow.

Bexley during the Blizzard of '78

Bexley Hall, located at 46, 48, 50 and 52 Massachusetts Avenue, is an early twentieth century brick building, consisting of four four-story walkups surrounding a central courtyard. It is almost directly across the street from MIT's Building 7 — old MIT official directories described it as being "a stoned throw from the Institute". As former apartments, renovated in the 1970s, Bexley suites have full kitchens and bathrooms. The soundproof walls of Bexley can be painted by students and are plastered with murals and graffiti, some of which date back to the 1960s.

Long known for its alternative culture, Bexley was among the first MIT dormitories to become coed. It was also one of the first to be co-species, as residents used to let their cats roam free around the building decades before MIT adopted a cat-friendly policy in 2008.

Well known alumni of Bexley Hall include Dan Bricklin, co-inventor of the computerized spreadsheet, and Jeff Sagarin, a sports computerized ratings guru who first became known through his ranking and odds (betting) lines in USA Today, but later was hired by the NCAA to help with computerizing the basketball tournament selection process. Also among best recognized former Bexley residents is Institute Professor Jerome Lettvin and his wife Maggie who were Bexley "houseparents" in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Burton-Conner House

Burton House

Burton-Conner House (or simply "Burton-Conner" or "BC"), located at 410 Memorial Drive. At maximum uncrowded capacity, Burton-Conner holds just under 350 students. The building is five stories high plus a ground floor.

Burton-Conner is a combination of two major 'portions' of the building: the larger Burton side, which was opened in 1950, and the smaller Conner side, which was opened in 1970.

In the dorm, nine floors (2 through 5 on the Conner side and 1 through 5 on the Burton side) are used for student housing. Most residents name their floor by their side name followed by a cardinal number denoting their floor, such as "Burton 2"; Burton Third, home of the Burton Third Bombers, is the only floor that is often named by an ordinal number. Burton 2 has a large Jewish population because of the presence of a Kosher kitchen in its center suite. A group of Hillel students gather on Burton 2 after Shabbat (Jewish Sabbath) services and sit around a table and sing lively z'mirot (Jewish songs) in an event they know as "Tisch" every Friday evening. On Conner 1 are the housemaster's apartment, a library with Athena-network computers, a study area, and the Residential Life Associate's apartment. On the ground floor, notable features include an electronics lab and darkroom (unused for over 10 years), music rooms, a game room, weight and exercise rooms, and a lounge with a snack bar.

East Campus Alumni Memorial Housing

Aerial view of the two parallels of East Campus Alumni Memorial Housing.

Better known as "East Campus" or "Fred the Dorm," the East Campus Alumni Memorial Houses, located at 3 Ames Street, are an undergraduate dorm formed from six "houses" each named after an alumna/alumnus of MIT: Munroe, Hayden, Wood, Walcott, Bemis, and Goodale. The six "houses" are arranged in two long north-south parallels, east and west, of three houses each, and are connected by floor. The houses are architectural entities; the floors are social entities: once a student has got to her room, she can more easily walk to any other room on the floor than go up or down stairs to another floor. A student would typically think of herself as a resident of Third East (third floor, east parallel) rather than a resident of Bemis House. Floors with distinctive cultures often have additional names such as "41st West", "Tetazoo," "Putz," or "Slugfest".

The dorm celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2005. Because of the dorm's age, students are allowed to paint and alter rooms and floor common spaces up to the limits of what the Cambridge fire code will allow. Students frequently use technology to customize their rooms, building projects such as an Emergency Pizza Button to have Domino's deliver a cheese pizza, a disco dance floor, and an automatic door-unlocking system.

The Walker Memorial building near East Campus was the location of the Time Traveler Convention on May 7, 2005.

Notable alumni of East Campus include NASA astronaut Michael Fincke, Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and George Smoot, co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics.

MacGregor House

MacGregor House

MacGregor House, located at 450 Memorial Drive, was built in 1970 and is named for Frank S. MacGregor. It consists of a 16-story high-rise tower surrounded by a four-story low-rise. Both parts consist of suites grouped into "entries" of three to four floors each. The entries are named by letter: A, B, C, D, and E entries are located in the tower and F, G, H, and J entries are located in the low-rise. There is no I-entry, because (in true-MIT style) i is imaginary!

Each suite in MacGregor houses six to eight people, usually coed. Almost all rooms in MacGregor are singles; the three doubles in F entry are a mistake. Each suite comes equipped with a bathroom and a kitchen area with a stove-top; in addition, one suite in an entry will also have an oven.

MacGregor features various amenities, including a dark room, music room, game room, and weight room. The central lounge, TFL, an acronym for 'Tastefully Furnished Lounge', is on the first floor, near the campus convenience store.

McCormick Hall

McCormick Hall

McCormick Hall, located at 320 Memorial Drive, is a women-only dormitory consisting of two 8-floor towers (the east tower and the west tower) and an annex. The three sections are connected on the ground floor. Each tower has a penthouse on the top floor that looks out on the Boston skyline. The funds for building McCormick Hall came from Katharine Dexter McCormick, the first woman to graduate from MIT with a science degree and a leading biologist, suffragist, and philanthropist in the early twentieth century.

The dining halls are open to all MIT students every weeknight evening.

New House

New House, located at 471-476 Memorial Drive, is a series of six joined five-story buildings arranged in a zig-zag fashion, each (like East Campus's sections) named after alumni. A main hallway on the first floor (known as "The Arcade") connects all the houses, and upper-floor connections also exist between houses 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 6. (All of the smaller buildings comprising New House are also referred to as "houses.") There are kitchens throughout the dormitory. New House is connected through a tunnel to MacGregor House so that residents can have easy access to MacGregor's convenience store.

Instead of having elevators, as in many other dorms, air conditioning is available in the rooms of New House (since limited funding forced a choice to be made between those two options). This feature becomes quite useful at the near-summer beginnings of fall terms and ends of spring terms, when local temperatures can reach up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

New House is sometimes referred to as "New West Campus Houses".

Next House

Next House, located at 500 Memorial Drive, is five stories tall and houses about 350 people. Patterned after the success of Baker House, it opened in September 1981. The Next House designation was unofficial and thought to be temporary until a sufficient donation had been received to name the dorm. As a result, the Institute has nearly always referred to the building as 500 Memorial Drive, while students have always called the dorm Next House. It is divided into east and west wings which are connected at the center, so, like East Campus, location is referred to by "(ordinal number) (wing)" when spoken or "(cardinal number) (wing initial)" when written, such as "5th west" or "5W". When Next House first opened, the hallway directly ahead of the elevator opening was referred to as "central," so one could live on "4th Central" as well. Each floor contains a large main lounge that faces the river, along with several smaller lounges, colloquially named in accordance to their location (e.g. "elevator lounge" or "far west lounge"), or nicknamed by their residents (ex. the 4W elevator lounge was dubbed the "White Rabbit Lounge" for the 2008-09 year). The 5th floor also features skylights placed various areas. By the way, Simmons has a ball pit. It's pretty cool.

The first level is home to the infamous "TFL" (Tastefully Furnished Lounge, also the site of the annual Next Act theatrical production) along with music practice rooms, Next Dining (open Sunday-Thursday to all MIT students), Athena cluster, and workout rooms. The basement level offers a laundry room, game area, and the Country Kitchen, where students are often seen cooking up various meals. The TFL was so named at the first Next House governance meeting after a suggestion was offered by a group of upper classmen who had moved from MacGregor House.

Despite its distance from campus, Next House is viewed as one of the most family-like dorms, thanks to its residence-based advising system and friendly atmosphere. Some students living at Next prefer to bike or take the Tech Shuttle to and from campus while others enjoy the quiet walk.

Random Hall

Random Hall

Random Hall, located at 290 Massachusetts Avenue, was created by the joining of two old, identical buildings, a process known to some residents as "siamization." Originally built in 1894 and converted to a dormitory in 1968, Random Hall is the oldest building owned by MIT and lacks elevators. The four physical floors of the building are divided by the firewall which runs down its middle, with openings between the sides on the first and third floors, creating eight logical floors which each have distinct personalities and names. The two sides of Random Hall are known as the "290 side" and the "282 side," after the street addresses of the two entries.

It is the smallest of the MIT dorms, housing only about 90 undergraduates, and is located about a block past the northern border of the main campus. Random Hall is known for its bathroom and laundry machine online servers (bathroom.mit.edu and laundry.mit.edu, respectively), which allow people to determine remotely whether bathrooms and washers or dryers are in use.

Senior House

Senior House entrance on Amherst Street

Senior House is the oldest dormitory at MIT. Since its construction in 1918, it has served as the Institute's first dormitory and on-campus fraternity, a mixed undergraduate and graduate dorm, an all-graduate facility, a seniors' dormitory, and military housing during World War II. It is currently a co-ed undergraduate residence. The building is an L-shaped building directly adjacent to the residence of the President of MIT. A tower at the center of the North side features neo-classical columns that reflect the architecture of the original MIT Cambridge campus.

The building's address was originally 4 Ames Street, and had six entries:

• Ware
• Atkinson
• Runkle (John Daniel Runkle, second president of MIT)
• Holman (Silas W. Holman, Professor of Physics)
• Nichols (Ernest Fox Nichols, ninth president of MIT)
• Crafts (James Crafts, fourth president of MIT).

Each entry has four floors, except for Runkle, which has six. The entries are arranged in an L-shape around a central courtyard.

Senior House alumni include Lawrence Summers (Economics, 1975), former president of Harvard University and formerly Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration; Bruce Morrison (Chemistry, 1965), United States Representative for the 3rd Congressional District of Connecticut, 1983–1991; Moshe Arens (Mechanical Engineering, 1947), former member of the Israeli Knesset, defence minister, and ambassador to the United States; Gordon S. Brown (Electrical Engineering, 1931), former dean of Engineering at MIT and a pioneer in the development of automatic-feedback systems and numerically controlled machine tools.

Simmons Hall

Simmons Hall.

Simmons Hall, located at 229 Vassar Street, was designed by architect Steven Holl and dedicated in 2002. At the cost of $78.5 million, it is MIT's most expensive dormitory built on campus since Baker House.

It is 382 feet long and 10 stories tall, housing 350 undergraduates, faculty housemasters, visiting scholars, and graduate resident tutors [GRTs, MIT's equivalent of an RA]. The structure is concrete block perforated with approximately 5,500 square windows each measuring two feet (0.60 meters) on a side, and additional larger and irregularly-shaped windows. An 18" (0.46 meters) wall depth is designed to provide shade in summer while allowing the winter sun to help heat the building, without air conditioning. Unfortunately, the efficacy of such a design is yet to be proven and temperature problems plague parts of the building throughout the year. The students complain that the very small metal window frames and screens create a faraday cage which make it difficult to receive wireless telephone signals. An average single room has nine windows, each with its own small curtain.

Internal design consists of one- and two-person rooms—some in suite-like settings with semi-private bathrooms—and lounges with and without kitchens, roughly arranged into three towers (the "A", "B", and "C" towers). Simmons Hall is one of the four dormitories that have dining halls; the dining facility is open Sunday through Thursday evenings to members of the MIT community.

The building has been nicknamed the "sponge," but opinions on the aesthetics of the building remain strongly divided. On one hand, Simmons Hall won the 2003 American Institute of Architects Honor Award for Architecture, and the 2004 Harleston Parker Medal, administered by the Boston Society of Architects and awarded to the "most beautiful piece of architecture building, monument or structure" in the Boston area. On the other hand, the building has been criticized as being ugly, a sentiment echoed in James Kunstler's "Eyesore of the Month" catalog . Many of the residents of Simmons complain that aesthetics came as a higher priority than functionality. For example, residents in the "A" tower must take two different elevators, or must walk the length of the building twice (more than an eighth of a mile) to reach the dining hall because neither the "A" elevator nor "A" tower staircases reach the first floor, where the dining hall is located. Other oddities include staircases that do not offer access to every floor. Furniture for dormitory rooms are custom-designed, modular, and plywood and have received mixed reviews, garnering praise for their modularity and criticism for their excessive weight and lack of durability.

Due to the architectural attention given to this building, architects are sometimes found trying to observe student life in the building, an occurrence that the students strongly resent (notices are sometimes sent out by e-mail when architects do enter the building, alerting residents to escort them out).

Additionally, as part of the MIT List Visual Arts Center's Percent-for-Art program, a piece was commissioned for the building by American artist Dan Graham. The sculpture, titled "Ying Yang Pavilion," consists of a glass-walled, rock-filled area in the shape of half the ying-yang symbol in plan, while the other half contains a shallow pool of water. This pool is often populated by rubber ducks, the unofficial mascot of Simmons Hall. The piece is located on a small terrace on the second floor of the building and is often used as a "jail" of sorts for unwanted guests, due to the fact that both entry and exit require MIT card access.

Simmons Hall was featured in the exhibit "Inside the Sponge - Students Take on MIT Simmons Hall" at the Canadian Centre for Architecture(Montreal) in the fall of 2006.

ALSO, BY THE WAY, SIMMONS HAS A BALL PIT GUYS!!!!

External links

• Official MIT undergraduate housing website