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Monday, December 24, 2001

Living History

Thanks to Matt Adams '02 for the following research on the Chapter House:

The history of 300 Pawling Ave. as anything more than just a parcel of land begins back in the 1870's. In the early 1870's, George Harrison was in ownership of a tract of land on Pawling Ave. that appears to have been unoccupied previously. (The sale deed for this house reads February 2, 1877 but at that time ownership was not changed until mortgages on that property were paid. In essence he didn't gain "ownership" until he fully payed off the mortgage on the property, which he had bought several years earlier). This piece of land was subdivided into lots 1 through 20 but Mr. Harrison owned them all. This piece of land covered the entire triangular section of land between Pawling Ave. (which at that time was going by the name of Troy-Sand Lake Turnpike, or perhaps by its even older name of Washington Ave.) and Spring Ave, and up from Myrtle Ave, it also included quite a bit of property that is now part of Emma Willard. 

In fact, when the initial blueprint for the house was submitted in February of 1871 the plan was for the road to swing well out past where the house exists, perhaps as far around as the backside of what is now Emma Willard. Original blueprints were drawn up by Eddy & Greene and issued in February of 1871 which show the house in much the same shape it has today, but with other building also existing on the property. A hundred plus feet in front of the house a tennis court was to be place. Behind the house roughly 80 feet a garage was to be built, and a bit behind that a shed. To the right of the house and a good way out a greenhouse was to be built. This is all the detail we have as far as the original construction of the house. Lot 5 encompassed the location for the house and the land that still is owned by the owner of 300 Pawling Ave.
This drawing was filed at the Rennselaer County Clerk's office April 8th, 1873 suggesting that construction must have been underway, if not already completed, at that time. A year of completion of 1874 seems to be a reasonable assumption. Apparently, around this time the path of Pawling Ave. was set in its current location and by the time the house had been built, the idea of the road looping around the property had been abandoned, as can be seen from a map of Troy circa 1877 which shows the layout of the property with the house in front near the road as it is today, and a green house and garage behind. Apparently the small shed idea was scrapped as well.

The early history of Pi Lambda Phi can be divided into two periods. The first, known as the Founders' Period, began with the inception of the fraternity at Yale University in 1895. In a few short years the fraternity grew to a position of enviable promise and achievement only to totter and collapse with equal suddenness. 

The second, or Revitalization Period, dates from 1908, when the Alpha chapter was established at Columbia University. It is from this chapter that the current Pi Lambda Phi Fraternity developed-young, vibrant and energetic-into its current status among the great collegiate fraternities.

1949 - Kappa Tau fraternity founded at RPI. Founders are Kenneth Anderson (Founding President), Branting, Hickey, Clough, Dick Morse, Reynolds, Robinson, Schlicht, Stattel and Vallance. Dick Morse sent an alumni update:

1. Retired from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey July 1, 1991 as an Assistant Treasurer (we had two of us fellows) after about 23 years of service there. You may well ask what did an engineering type have to do with such...that is an interesting question yet to be answered.


2. Had over 15 years industrial experience at various levels up to a division manager (just a title) ranging from Remington Rand, Inc., Reynolds Metals Company, RCA Corporate Staff and other Divisions, and RCA Global Communications.


3. Having receive a telegram to report to duty five days after the North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel in 1950 for being in the active Reserve, but also being in the Air Force ROTC (remember we were paid our GI Bill and ROTC pay), the Air Force discharged me from the USAFR upon my agreeing to serve as a USAF Commissioned Officer upon graduation in June 1951 about sums up roughly my Military services. Oh, for a heart attack in 1964, they medically retired me from the USAFR after a combined active Army and Air Force active and reserve time of about 18 years....missed the 20 years for retirement pay.

4. In retirement have been busy doing volunteerteaching at Delaware Valley College Center for Learning in Retirement (we have over 350 retirees aging from 55 [yup] to just under 100 years old ranging from housewives to a former Federal Reserve Board Member, lots of engineers, lawyers, professors, etc.). Put in about seven years as one of the Commissioners of our local Water & Sewer Commission (in PA for those that do not know, being a Commonwealth State, the legal jurisdictions from State, County, Township, etc., are most interesting to say the least ... one learns quickly to cooperate), an a volunteer Board of Directors Member and Secretary as well as their Corporate Secretary for non-profit (IRS 501[c][3]) corporation involving publications, services, and additional involvement as Chair of their Church Health Assistance Board.

5. My wife being a retired Managing Editor of Nursing Research still doing free lance writing and editing uses me for doing internet research (of course, after "parental control" review, right?). With four daughters (prior marriage and current marriage), eight grand children (from three to 31 in age), and one great granddaughter to be 1 in October gives you a quick profile of those that try to "keep me in line."

1954 - Kappa Tau affiliates with Pi Lambda Phi.

"Prior to the move to 300 Pawling, the house was at 248 Eighth Street, on the northeast corner of Eagle Street. It has long since been torn down.
The fraternity was founded in a house rented from a faculty member. It was on the same block but on the other side of the street, farther north and almost at the next corner. I believe we stayed there only a couple of years." (thanks to Roger Orloff.)

1956 - Roger Orloff provides a memoir of his time at RPI:

Who is Roger Orloff? Yes, I am that Roger. The dishwasher was named after me. I have had a successful career and two children who have given me five grandchildren and are leading happy and productive lives. At NYKT, I was a successful rush chairman at a critically important time. I thought up and ran the first alumni homecoming. I served as Marshal and Scribe. I was chapter representative to two national conventions, alumni representative to the Pilam national governing council and recipient of two national awards. I edited the national magazine and served as alumni supervisor to two chapters. I have founded and been President of a Rensselaer alumni chapter, been Vice President of the Rensselaer Alumni Association, raised a good deal of money for our alma mater, served as an elector for the Alumni Hall of Fame and received several awards from RPI including the Albert Fox Demers Medal. For all of this, it appears that I will be remembered by my fraternity as the answer to a trivia question about a kitchen appliance. More about that dishwasher later.
I enrolled at Rensselaer in the fall of 1956. Apart from the green roof campus, it was a place I doubt current students would recognize. The school had the caring, nurturing atmosphere of a Marine boot camp. I believe many faculty members would have been amused by the notion that they had any personal stake in helping their students succeed. Some took public delight in handing out large numbers of low grades. The joke about one of every three students not graduating was not only a staple of freshman orientation but understated. I believe closer to half of new enrollees did not graduate with their classes. "I hate this f-----g place," was such a common mantra that some of my classmates who eventually became alumni leaders not only shouted it in the halls of the freshman dorms but refused to go near the school until long after their graduations.
The freshman dorms were Spartan to an extreme, and the upper class ones, only slightly better. Dining hall food ranged from mediocre to inedible.
On campus social life was close to non-existent. While Rensselaer had always technically been coed, few women ever applied. I had two in my class. My freshman year editor of the Poly replied to a letter from one of the leading fashion magazines, inviting him to nominate a candidate for their best dressed coed contest, by saying, "we're all fellas." There was no place and few events on campus to which to take a date.
In this environment, the fraternity system was a salvation. If you were invited to join one, you didn't think seriously about being an independent. There were 28 fraternities my freshman year. About 55% of students belonged. It was rare that a student with any significant stature on campus was not a member. We probably looked on the other 45% as social misfits.
I doubt anyone, not even us, thought seriously about Pi Lambda Phi as one of the top fraternities. However, we didn't much care. We had different priorities. As long as we could pledge enough men each year to keep going, we were satisfied. Other fraternities tried to impress rushees with the involvement of their brothers in campus politics, athletics, honor societies and publications or with their parties. We talked about the opportunities for personal growth in a non-sectarian fraternity (when there were only a couple of others on campus) and one small enough that every member could make a significant difference. With the benefit of hindsight, I think we were years ahead of our time.
Pi Lambda Phi had been founded at Rensselaer in 1949 as Kappa Tau, a local fraternity. As a pledge, I had to memorize the names of the nine founders. I met a few of them but never really got to know any. I think at least some were returning veterans. I don't know their motives in starting a fraternity and hope other brothers will shed some light on this. The first fraternity house was a rented attached house on the same block of Eighth Street as the one in which I lived but farther north and across the street.
I don't know what prompted them to affiliate with Pi Lambda Phi in 1954. The resources of a national fraternity were an obvious advantage. I suspect Pilam's long non-sectarian tradition appealed to them.
By the time I arrived in 1956, they had moved down the block to a Victorian relic on the northeast corner of Eighth and Eagle Streets. Not only the house but the entire block was eventually torn down to make way for an ill-conceived expressway that was never built.
The fraternity to which I pledged had a membership around 20, making it one of the smallest on campus. Average fraternity membership was in the high 50's. What we lacked in numbers, we made up for in character. Our sales pitch in rushing tended to attract men of considerable depth. Many of my contemporaries have led very successful lives. We took running our fraternity very seriously and could discuss it at great length with each other. Fraternity meetings were on Monday evenings and could produce spirited debates. I think this attitude helps explain why our fraternity is still thriving after 55 years when some of those regarded as the tops on campus in my undergraduate days have disappeared.
The fraternity house had probably been built around the 1880's. At the time, Troy was a prosperous industrial center, Eighth Street was a wealthy neighborhood and the house was a mansion. By the late 1950's, those days were long gone. It was an ongoing struggle to maintain an aging building and keep a few steps ahead of the next crisis. The house slept up to 24. We probably needed in the high teens to break even. It seemed we were always close to the edge of not having them.
On the southwest corner of the roof was a round turret, below which were bay windows in the original second floor master bedroom and ground floor living room. The bay windows consisted of three separate sliding windows, each with two large sheets of curved glass. The glass was so unusual that it had to be custom cast. The one time I can recall that we had to replace a pane, the price was so high it seemed we nearly had to take out a second mortgage to pay for it.
In the basement was an old fashioned player piano that I think had come with the house. With the piano had come an incredible collection of piano rolls, none of them containing a song written later than 1930 and many much older and long forgotten. Standing around the piano singing them was always an activity unique to our parties.
The precarious financial condition of the fraternity made a successful rushing season critical. Failure wasn't an option. The rush system at that time called for freshmen to visit fraternities, in groups of four houses a day, on fall weekends. At the conclusion of these open houses, they submitted preference cards, naming the fraternities by which they wanted to be rushed. From these, fraternities chose those they wanted to rush. It was essential for open house guides to take careful mental or written notes, as a reference in reviewing preference cards. This was followed by a two week period in which rushees could be invited to visit the house twice for coffee and one week in which they could be invited twice for dinner. Rushees could also be invited to three parties during this period and offered blind dates. After this, bids were extended.
I had served as assistant rushing chairman in my sophomore year and was elected chairman as a junior. When I picked up our preference cards, there were all of three. We responded by taking the unconventional step of rushing freshmen who hadn't given us a preference card (relying on our notes and recollections of open house to choose them), made a strong pitch for our message about the advantages of a small, non-sectarian fraternity and worked like mad for three weeks. The result was a pledge class numbering in the high teens, one of our best to that date in quality as well as quantity.
My junior year was also the tenth anniversary of the founding of Kappa Tau and the fifth of its affiliation with Pi Lambda Phi. I got the idea of holding our first alumni reunion and of getting myself appointed a committee of one to run it. Not thinking about what Troy winters can do to travel plans, I scheduled it to coincide with a major hockey game, always a strong attraction for alumni. The response was terrific. Several of the founders even came back. It was a thrill to meet people who until then had existed only as a memory exercise for pledges.
By today's standards, the term, "parietal rules," probably sounds like as much of an anachronism as the concept does. In the context of Rensselaer, it referred to rules governing the presence of women in a men's residence. As a freshman, had I had a sister and wanted her to visit me in my dorm room, I could have only done it on a Sunday afternoon, with the permission of my proctor and with my door fully open.
We made our own rules in the fraternity house, but they weren't much more liberal. If you wanted to take a date to your room during a party, you were expected to leave the door at least half way open. A concession to your privacy was that, if you left a tie on the doorknob, there was an informal understanding not to walk in. On the weekends of the three major dances, the entire house was turned over to dates, and the brothers moved out. On these occasions, you weren't allowed above the first floor, period, except to use a single bathroom. A member of my pledge class was actually depledged for breaking these rules.
In my sophomore year, the sexual revolution intruded, when several brothers proposed a significant liberalization of the rules. The result was the sort of intense philosophical debate that seemed common at our fraternity meetings. Our Rex, Chuck Weiss, was a senior, married, a veteran and a few years older than the rest of us. He threatened that, if we changed the rule, he would be so offended that he wouldn't be able to visit the house as an alumnus. We changed the rule anyway. I think Chuck eventually forgave us. My roommate, Ray Paolino, and I were among those who argued against the change. After the meeting, Ray pointed out that we now had the best of both worlds. We could take advantage of the liberalization while having the moral satisfaction of having fought against it.
While I was still a pledge, Barry Hyman and Carl Koenig got the idea of starting a newsletter, the Pilam Pentagon, for our few dozen or so alumni. I eventually wound up editing it. This wasn't just before the web, it was before xerography. Publication involved cutting a mimeograph stencil on a typewriter and taking it to the student union for reproduction. Since the stencils were almost impossible to correct, you typed very carefully.
Now about that dishwasher. Until my pledge year, the fraternity had never employed a cook. Brothers prepared their own meals. It was inconvenient, but we always seemed to be cutting corners on expenses. When we finally hired a cook, we created the position of commissary agent, to supervise her purchasing of food. We also instituted the practice of having two brothers a night, in rotation, wait on tables and wash pots and pans and dishes. They were washed by hand in the sink. Since commissary agent was a job no one particularly wanted, we added the incentive of being exempt from waiting tables and dish washing. One of my sophomore year roommates, Mike Swagel, volunteered for the job, mostly to get out of waiting and doing dishes every two weeks or so.
Mike was to become a brilliant physicist. He graduated from Rensselaer with Dean's List grades, got a doctorate at Columbia and worked at Xerox's famed Palo Alto Research Lab, site of many important innovations in information technology. He died of leukemia in his late 30's, leaving the world a poorer place for his absence.
As brilliant as Mike was, he was also considered something of an absent minded scientist. The thought of him supervising the spending of a major part of our budget didn't inspire confidence. Assuming it was an act of personal sacrifice, I volunteered to be assistant commissary agent, to keep an eye on him. I was rewarded by being exempted from every second turn at waiting and doing dishes. Unfortunately, some of my brothers decided that my real motivation was to get out of doing dishes. While they didn't want to have anything to do with supervising the kitchen themselves, they were happy to complain that the job wasn't so hard that I should get anything in return for it. I don't think the fraternity bought a dishwasher until after I graduated. However, the story was still fresh enough in brothers' minds that it was decided to name it after me. Oh well, I suppose it's better than not being remembered at all.
1962 - Steve Mirer '62 writes in "It's refreshing to see that some things never change - the fraternity house needing major improvements to keep it from being a hazard. My experience was with 248 8th St., but it sounds the same."
1964 - Here is a picture of the brotherhood ca. 1964:

1968 - Rabbi Joshua Segal writes in "I have great memories of my years at NYKT of Pi Lambda Phi. Beyond the pure fun, I suspect that I learned more about the economics of running a house in my year as KOE, than at any time of my life. 248 8th Street was an absolute sieve in the winter. The tank truck would be by weekly in the winter -- but then again, heating oil was about $0.069 per gallon!"
1969 - Chapter House at 300 Pawling Avenue purchased.
Details courtesy of Rabbi Joshua Segal:
We actually took ownership of the house in the late spring of 1969. I remember that because the lease on my apartment ran out on Jun. 30 and the lease on my new apartment started on July 1. Ergo, we (Bruce Friday and I) had no place to sleep on that night. We parked a U-Haul trailer (attached to my car) under the canopy and we slept in sleeping bags in the corridor near the door. (We were concerned after years at 248 8th Street, that our belongings were not really safe in the U-Haul.).That summer, Lyle Leverich, almost single-handedly, installed the sprinkler system. It seems like a room or two was added in the basement under the porch and a room was added in the tower. We had to add fire doors in places, but as best as I remember, all the other things that appeared to be "additions" were done prior to our buying it.
Lyle Leverich clarifies and adds to Rabbi Segal's comments regarding the beginnings of the NYKT chapter:
Josh Segal is not quite right about the Pawling house and my involvement. We had to fight the city for the right to occupy, and it took about two years. Finally, summer of 1969 (my undergrad. graduation year), we got it. I was staying in Troy finishing my Masters project, and organized the work force. Contractors had been hired to do the sprinklers, fire escape, parking lot; and nothing else.
Equipment had been bought for the kitchen, but no one hired to install it. I wound up doing the entire kitchen; gas, fan, sinks, etc; plus heat in two basement rooms. Some of the new brothers came up weekends and we poured two cement floors and some steps outside. We tore out a kitchen on the third floor, removed a cripple elevator from the stair way, made the contractors enclose the boiler differently to save the room next to it, and generally worked our asses off. We also had some fun along the way; officially breaking in the house; so to speak.
I do remember Dan Alper made the room off the front doors to the left as you enter into a private room for himself. Several of the windowless basement rooms were also finished by the new brothers.
Art Price '64 was a "hanging Rex" if I remember correctly, as well as an RPI prof. Al Bell Isle '65 painted a huge cartoon mural on the basement wall of 8th. street; very good artist. Joseph Rosner " '65" was the house chaperone; he was probably in his 50's. Roger Belfay '68 helped me re-plumb the steam pipes which had frozen in the 8th street basement over winter break, which was then the end of January.
The guys who worked on the Pawling house the summer of '69 with me were Doug Greene (pouring the cement floors), and I think Jim Scott (not sure) If so, he was the other brother to "break in" the house with one of the girls from Griswald Heights who came by.
1972 - Rush Pamphlet (courtesy Steph Valentine '72):
(I had this pamphlet and I'll re-post if I can find it again -- Darren Felzenberg, 12/24/2010.)
One of the rushees during this time was Mark Tollin:
Yrs truly was among the first set of brothers to occupy the property in Sept 69 (in those days the Tute (how's that for self-dating??) school year still started in late Sept). For example, if the house should still possess its "original" (steel industrial strength) stove, the same -- plus the big, 2-door frig that greeted us at that distant date -- had been installed the previous summer courtesy of Jay Erlebacher (70, I believe) whose family was in the business of supplying such equip (Jay was from Syracuse or Utica if I recollect). The cook in those days was one Ben Noel; I wonder if stories from his tenure are still passed down as part of chapter folklore.
Re "the boiler", even I don't quite remember what heated the place way back then (believe it was oil), but one of the many projects during the 1st few months of the 69-70 school year was to turn the basement from a dungeon-like cellar into a series of rooms for brothers (including one called "the pit", excavated by hand in part by Ward Hickman 72) plus a party room with a bar.
1992 - Chapter House is used in Al Pacino movie "Scent Of A Woman."
1998 - Mufasa is the House mascot. Michael Nerenburg remembers Mufasa:
I wanted to write something just remembering Mufasa our mascot from 1998 to 2005.
In the summer of 1998, after we put Roscoe down as our long time mascot and king of all rock carrying dogs, we needed a new mascot who came to be Mufasa. At the time the only people living in the house were myself, Joe Cuda, Dan Monahan, and Joe’s evil cat Phoenix. We tried to get a dog from the pound but they wouldn’t give us one since none of us had a Troy address on a driver’s license so Dan’s idea was to look in the newspaper and sure enough there were people giving dogs away so we called one of them and took a ride over to East Greenbush and outside of a house which could have doubled as a trailer was Mufasa. The three of us looked at him and looked at each other and knew immediately there was no reason to call anyone else.
Over that summer, Joe, Dan and I spent a lot of time with him getting him prepared to live in that house which wasn’t always so easy to live in. I spent a lot of time making sure he knew the boundaries of the house, Joe took care of many of his Vet related things, including one very unpleasant one and Dan spent hours upon hours teaching him commands and what could be called obedience training, he probably should have spent time teaching me that.
Mufasa saw a tremendous amount, he was an icon at rush events, he cowered under a desk while Keith, Matt and I tried to blow up AEPi and/or the neighbors, he wrestled even though he didn't want to, he attended the 420 smoke out in the quad and he went to girls dorms to help brothers (namely me) pick up women...I can’t blame him for my failures, he did all he could.
I think one of the subtle things Mufasa did was with the class of 2001 all moving in at the same time, all together they breathed new life into a house that had seen tough times, he was a morale booster and reflected what the house would become.
The first rush after he came we got a large pledge class and I always felt Mufasa represented the young energetic house we were or at least becoming. The house adopted him well after losing Roscoe who had a long run and it was great for us as a group, make his life as much fun as I think it possibly could have been. I left in 2000, for someone like me who would show up at the house randomly to see a bunch of new people who I did not know, seeing his familiar face (even if he was giving me a dirty look) was something that made the place familiar. He always looked great and no matter how old he was, which we were never really sure of, he lived the best life I think he could have lived and for everyone that kept him happy and healthy over the years, everyone appreciates it especially myself.

Fraternally,
Michael Nerenburg, Class of 2000

Current Rooms & Occupancies: Tower - 1, High Country - 3, Shoebox - 1, Pit - 2, Cage - 3, Mandarin Suite- 2, Hotel Felz - 2, Milk & Cookies - 3, Waterfront - 1, Obie's Room - 1, Sun Porch - 3, Freeway - 1, Low Country - 1, Happy Room - 1.
Hotel Felz named after Darren Felzenberg.
Milk & Cookies named after David Worth and Mark Dobrosielski.
Obie's Room named after Todd Obermeyer.
Happy Room named after Frances "Happy" Hallahan.
Dishwasher named "Roger" after Roger Orloff.
Refrigerator named "Marvin" after Marvin Meistreich.


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3 comments:

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  2. A couple of comments about the move-in years. Clark Kashmaier was probably the other brother who helped pour the concrete with Lyle during the summer. Jim Scott and Ward (??) poured the concrete in what was later known as the 'pit' after the brothers started to populate the house. Dan Alper and I bought the industrial quality Vulcan stove toward the end of the previous semester (trading in the stove from 248 Eighth Street) I beleive this is the same stove in the 300 Pawling Ave. house today (with many replacement parts.)

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  3. On another note, I managed to purchase a used set of Altec Voice of the Theater speakers at a good price in the 1980's after I returned to grad school. How are those speakers holding up ?

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