When Lorenzo Reynolds heard the fire alarm, he ran the mile from his lawn to his insurance office in downtown Hillsdale. The building in flames, he hurried inside to recover his books. An explosion threw him out of a second story window and into the street, where he was resuscitated and carried back to his home.
The former secretary and treasurer of the college spent the next two weeks recovering in his home, which stood then and still stands today at the corner of Fayette and Manning Street. Today the building houses Hillsdale College’s Delta Tau Delta fraternity.
Over the past 140 years, the Reynolds’ house has changed hands among a variety of owners, including the Reynolds’ family, the Slovacek family, and professor of biology Dan York, before the house returned, again, to college ownership. For 20 years it was even used as an elderly nursery home.
Reynolds himself designed the house and built it between 1874 and 1876. It has about 40 windows, York estimated, many of which still today have the original glass.
“Removing the windows would be like taking a museum piece and throwing it away,” York said. “But it’s a hell of a house to heat.”
The Reynolds family was something of a Hillsdale College dynasty. Reynolds’ father was one of the founders of Michigan Central College, the precursor institution to Hillsdale College that began in 1844. Reynolds attended Michigan Central and sent three of his children to Hillsdale College.
After the board elected him to the positions of secretary and treasurer, he helped rebuild campus and the college’s endowment after the 1864 fire. He built his house during his tenure with the college.
Despite that success, he was voted out of his position in 1877 amid, possibly dubious, accusations of dishonest bookkeeping, only one year after completing his home just blocks from Central Hall. His insurance office burned down two years later. According to the Portrait and Biographical Album of Hillsdale County, he was still recovering from the nervous shock as of 1888.
In the obituary of Reynolds’ wife, the Hillsdale Herald reported that “Hundreds remember her home as one of the pleasantest, and to which the college people and students were always welcomed.” Mary Reynolds died in the home surrounded by her family, and her funeral was held there on Feb. 26, 1891.
Reynolds, who remarried, died in 1920 at the age of 90. Besides his work for the college, The Collegian reports in his obituary that he “was the chief force in bringing about the construction of the city hall,” which is still used by the city today.
The college, sometime around the turn of the century, took ownership of his house.
When President Joseph William Mauck became president in 1902, the college offered him the Reynolds home. He disliked it, however, and bought instead Sunny Crest, or the current Alpha Tau Omega house.
Over the next 70 years, the building changed hands several times. From the 1940s the the 1960s, the house was used as a nursery home for the elderly.
The Slovacek family bought the house in the late 60s. They converted it into a modern home, remnants of which were still around when York bought the house in the late ‘90s: wall to wall shag carpeting and tile ceilings being two of them.
York owned the house for more than a decade. Over that time, the saloon-style bar he built in a room on the east side of the house became a Friday night gathering place for faculty, staff, and students.
In 2012, York sold the property to the college. It then gave the orphaned Delts a home – albeit a temporary one. Since the fraternity rechartered in 2007, they’ve hoped to build a new house.
“For now, that’s on the back-burner,” said Delt president Rossteen Salehzadeh.
The Kappa chapter of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity moved around the hill at least as many time as the Reynolds house changed hands in the 20th century. Pictured above are several of the houses the Delts lived in, including a property where Whitley Residence currently resides.
The Delts lived in that house from 1917 until 1971, when they built their Union-street house, which is also pictured above.
After the college disbanded the Delts in 2003, firemen burned down the Delts house as part of a training exercise. The college then erected the Suites on that property.
The fraternity is slowly settling into the their new house as they add furniture and maintenance updates parts.
“A year ago, you wouldn’t have recognized this place,” Salehzadeh said.
Long-term, the fraternity still plans on pursuing the construction of a new place. For now, the Reynolds house is home.