They argued over what the name was going to be, but no one could agree. In response, one man went out, bought a bottle of champagne, climbed up on the roof of the porch, and threw the bottle of champagne — a brand new bottle — onto the concrete sidewalk, proclaiming in a booming tone: “This is the Donnybrook!”
“And so the house was christened on that day,” concluded junior Josh Adkisson as he described the naming of the Donnybrook, an off-campus house situated right behind Simpson.
Many students living off campus at Hillsdale have turned their houses into something more than mere places to live, using crazy names and fun traditions to create their own cultural environment to benefit both themselves and visitors.
Freshman Forester McClatchety said his first experience with the off-campus culture was in The Love Shack, a men’s house on Fayette street that threw a party for freshmen at the beginning of the year.
“They were very proactive, and they always are, about inviting other people to their house and trying to plant and fertilize a community there,” he said. “I went there, and they had this awesome vinyl setup, and we danced to some crazy tunes.”
McClatchety said the men at the Love Shack and at other houses he has visited create a comfortable atmosphere where anyone is welcome to drop by and hang out.
“You can kind of island-hop from one place to another, depending on what you want to do, and I haven’t been to a place yet that seems confused as to why I showed up,” he said.
Students all have their own opinions as to which is the craziest name they have heard for a house, but in addition to “The Love Shack,” they mentioned houses with names like “Sesame Street,” “The Cockpit,” “West Berlin,” and “The Womb.”
Residents of The Womb (who are all men) revel in the strangeness of their house name by referring to one another as “Wombmates” and hosting parties on Labor Day.
Associate Dean of Men Jeffery Rogers said he enjoys the tradition of students naming their houses. “Even our security knows that certain houses, we have certain names for them. We know exactly where the house is at,” he said.
Asked his opinion on the craziest house, name, Rogers replied, “There’s a couple. I don’t know who Donny Brook is, I’ve been looking for the guy. I’m like, ‘Is he a student that excelled here?’ Maybe he’s one of the students that got the 4.0’.”
Rogers also mentioned the Yellow House: “Couldn’t they have been a little bit more creative: ‘The Yellow House,’ I mean come on now, this is Hillsdale.”
Rogers, as well as Associate Dean of Women Rebekah Dell, said off-campus students do a good job remaining integrated with the rest of campus. “Even though they live off campus, they’re in the library studying,” Rogers said.
Dell said she thinks some off-campus houses build strong identities while residents of others tend to be more focused in another area, such as student organizations or athletics: “I think it’s to varying degrees. Some groups of people are very intentional about wanting to establish an identity, establish a purpose for their house, and kind of why they’re there and what they’re about. Other groups of people, that’s not really their priority.”
After nearly 12 years of involvement with the college, however, Dell said that few, if any, houses maintain the same identity for more than a few years.
“Because houses change hands, it’s not necessarily consistent that a certain type of group or a certain type of friends would continue that legacy of the house,” she said.
There are a few residences that have been in the hands of Hillsdale students for significant stretches of time, though. One such place is The Wedge, a name given to both the second and third floors of a building owned by Moore Insurance Services, which is located right at the split between Broad and Howell Streets. The building has formerly been both a hotel and a bank. Each of the upper floors of the building — which is literally built in a wedge shape — constitutes a separate apartment.
Thomas Rupp, a junior who lives on the third floor with two of his friends, said the traditions of his house this year include watching ‘Psych’ every Wednesday night and hosting game nights. Rupp also likes to cook for his friends using his deep-fryer, which he received as a present this past Christmas.
“Most people will deep-fry chicken strips or french fries or fish,” Rupp said. “I deep-fry things like Oreos and gummy bears and cinnamon rolls.
Dell mentioned one house that she thinks has successfully maintained its reputation over several years: The Treehouse.
“It has an identity of being a place where students can come, gather, have great social events, things of that nature,” she said.
Senior Elena Salvatore, who currently lives there, said the house has had its name for five or six years.
“There used to be this giant tree out by the front porch. So I guess it kind of looked like a tree house. But in one of the storms in our sophomore year, it had to be cut down. So the tree left, but the name stayed,” she said.
Salvatore said the name of the house is in many ways tied to it’s personality in the minds of students.
“My freshman year, The Treehouse was kind of this holy grail of houses almost. It was the place to be, it was the place to live and all the cool upperclassmen women lived there. And I think even now a lot of underclassmen kind of think of it that way,” she said. “If you change the name, you change all that.”
The house itself is rather normal, except for a basement which Salvatore said may or may not be haunted.
Salvatore said Treehouse residents make an effort to invite underclassmen women often and to create an environment for studying so that anyone can come work on projects whenever they want.
While only one current Treehouse resident, junior Sally Nelson, will live there next year, Salvatore said she thinks the people who live there next year will have a similar mindset and carry on the tradition.
Perhaps the house best known for both its history and its culture is the Donnybrook. Situated right behind Simpson, the Donnybrook currently houses 7 men. The landlord, who bought the house to live in as a Hillsdale student, has leased it out to other students since he graduated a decade ago.
The house was named over four years ago after a town in Ireland called Donnybrook. The town was famous for holding the “Donnybrook Fair,” which ran from 1204 to 1855.
“It actually was a place where Irishmen gathered to get drunk and brawl and have fights,” said senior Daniel Spiotta, a Donnybrook resident of three years.
Before Spiotta came to campus, the residents of the house were trying to come up with a name. A junior named Ian Faley loved Irish music and, being on the rugby team, enjoyed fighting, so he wanted to name his house after this fair. It was Faley who climbed onto the roof and smashed the bottle of champagne on the sidewalk. Once the house had been christened, his friends could no longer argue about the name, so it stuck.
Members of the house still enjoy playing guitar and singing old Irish drinking songs. They also have a tradition called “Poetry Friday,” where anyone is invited to their house to read and recite poetry.
Spiotta described the house’s culture as “free and easy.”
“We like to be hospitable, and we like to be charitable as much as we possibly can be, and that means we want to sort of invite anyone and everyone who comes,” Spiotta said. “Also, we want it to be a safe haven where you can go and have a good party and not feel unsafe.”
“The pith of the environment there is joy,” McClatchety said. It seems like whenever I go there, they’re constantly in awe of something.” He also described the Donnybrook as “a bunch of precocious nineteenth-century intellectuals sitting around in their tweed suits smoking pipes.”
Not every house has the longevity of the Donnybrook or the Treehouse; many are new this year, and more houses with even crazier names will no doubt spring up next semester. But whether they are continuing a tradition or beginning a new one, off-campus houses around Hillsdale provide welcome environments to study, meet friends, and party. And if you are looking for an excuse to get up on a roof and smash a bottle of champagne, what better reason is there than the naming of a house? But perhaps a can of beer would be more practical.
