A sign of the rich culture Hillsdale students enjoy are the names of its off campus houses: some painted or engraved on wood, others just known colloquially.

Some off-campus houses take their names from their exterior appearance: Lodge, which looks like a log cabin; Duplex, which is exactly that; The Barns are distinguished by their colors: Green, Blue, and White. Others are less obvious.

BOG

Isaac Kirshner ’22 lived in a house named after a cartoon character.

“Bog was a radical experiment in off-campus life,” Kirshner said. “For better or for worse, we had an open door policy, which resulted in a kind of revolving-door sitcom for an entire year.”

Kirshner said others picked out the name “Frog Bog” before he moved in midway through the fall semester of 2020. The name was soon shortened to simply “Bog.”

“The guys picked ‘Frog Bog’ as an homage to a cozy cartoon frog on the internet,” Kirshner said. “And because the house was sweltering in August. Nominative determinism isn’t exactly scientific, but Bog, like a bog, attracted many different kinds of people from all over the campus-swamp.”

While he said he didn’t expect to make new friends his senior year, Kirshner attributes some of his lasting Hillsdale friendships to Bog.

“The whole house and adjacent friend group still has an active group chat three years later,” Kirshner said. “I am still grateful for the lifelong friends I made there. I know the rest of them feel the same.”

 

BOONDOCKS

Boondocks stands on the site of a former house that was destroyed in a fire, according to Boondocks resident senior John Vanopstall.

“It was originally the Doghouse, the seat of the pioneers of Sig Chi,” Vanopstall said. “That house burnt down and was rebuilt into what is now Boondocks.”

According to Vanopstall, the name references the 1999 film “The Boondock Saints.”

“It’s also a little ways from campus, so it’s a little ‘out in the boonies,’” Vanopstall said.

 

BURT HOUSE

Burt House is the house Becky Fultz-Roth bought in Hillsdale in 2009, gutted, and remodeled as her first college property. According to Fultz-Roth, she and her husband wanted the house’s name to reflect her husband’s family history.

“My husband wanted to honor his great, great, great-grandparents who came over from England in the mid-1800s and settled outside of Hillsdale, Thomas and Sarah Burt,” Fultz-Roth said. “In fact, they bought a lot of underdeveloped land and built a home on it south of Osseo, and in turn the township named the street Burt Road.”

According to Fultz-Roth, she and her husband were able to find a window from Thomas Burt’s old barn, which they installed inside another one of their properties, the Manning Stables.

 

CAMELOT

Camelot is among the newest off-campus houses on Manning Street.

“Our house name came about as a derivative of ‘The Castle’ or ‘The Castle on Manning,’ which was a name that I was pushing,” senior Steven Berntson said. “ Other guys thought that name was a bit too boring for a new Manning house. ‘Camelot’ came about because the house does in fact have a round table and because we’ve been smoking a lot of Camels this year.”

According to Berntson, each house member chose one of King Arthur’s knights for their house-naming part: King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Sir Percival, Sir Gawain, Sir Dinadan, and Sir Bedivere.

 

CASABLANCA

Junior Margaret McGee said the origin of her house’s name is  a mystery.

“We don’t know the original lore behind the name of ‘Casablanca,’” McGee said. “We only assume it was a spin on the fact that it’s a white house.”

 

THE COOP

The women’s house The Coop, not to be confused with the off-campus house “Coop,” which traditionally houses kappas, has Leo Bykerk ’24 to thank for its name. The first group of residents in The Coop named their house Ingleside, a reference to Anne of Green Gables, said The Coop resident senior Carolyn Bonar.

“They had a whole house-naming party and everything,” Bonar said.

But one of the women who lived there, Monica Blaney ’24, had a nickname courtesy of Bykerk: “The big chicken.”

“Leo and his friends, Bank and Andrew, renamed the house The Coop because ‘the big chicken’ lived there,’” Bonar said. “The name stuck.”

 

FRATICAN

Senior Samuel Wallace said his house has a decade-and-a-half of tradition behind it.

“Fratican has been in Delt for around 15 years at this point, and has been ‘Fratican’ since Delts first lived here,” Wallace said. “I don’t think there’s a person I know who would know the original story. I see a lot of houses changing names with every new set of people that live there and to me, Fratican and all the other Manning Houses keeping the same name year after year says a lot about the culture on Manning.”

 

GRACELAND

Senior Elizabeth Penola lives in a house inspired by the king of rock ‘n’roll.

“We’re not totally sure why the house is named Graceland but the Elvis presence is strong,” Penola said.  “There’s a miniature cardboard cutout of him in a suit in our living room as well as a portrait of him crying in the hallway — both of which have remained in the house for years.”

According to Penola, while Graceland’s naming origins are a mystery, lore surrounds the house.

“There are rumors Elvis once stopped here after a concert in Detroit,” Penola said. “The tale goes that when his car broke down, he found respite on Manning. Perhaps unlikely, but just maybe possible. I guess we’ll never know.”

 

GREEN GABLES

Unlike the similarly-inspired Ingleside, Green Gables retains its literary name.

“Our house has been Green Gables for a long time, to my knowledge,” senior Joanna Leckband said. “It switched to being a boy’s house in 2020, and they changed the name to CDC.”

When the house became a women’s house again, Leckband said the residents felt the original name needed to come back.

 

HALFWAY HOUSE

Senior Alexander Vietor lives in Halfway House, which sits back from the road behind two other houses.

“As far as I know, Halfway got its name since its address is 163 ½ Oak St.,” Vietor said. “It reminds me of Platform 9 ¾ in ‘Harry Potter.’”

 

HARBOR

Senior Esdras Blackwell said his house is named because of the decor.

“Harbor gets its name from the two (formerly three) paintings of ships which hang in our living room. The third painting has apparently been lost within the recesses of Simpson, as things tend to do,” Blackwell said. “Now we have a few more ‘Harboresque’ items, such as global maps and nautical flags.”

 

THE HEARTH

When senior Maddie Hornell was a junior, her housemate Rosemary Surdyke ’24 came upon a name for their house.

“We had been trying to come up with a name for our dear little house for a couple of weeks,” Hornell said. “We were seeking to capture the quaint charm of the name of an English manor house or maybe the lack-of-a-definite-article charm of Jungle or Egypt.”

According to Hornell, Surdyke awoke one morning with a stroke of inspiration.

“We all knew right away that ‘The Hearth’ had to be its name immediately,” Hornell said. “Rosemary took the initiative to craft a lovely poem surrounding the name, telling the story of Hestia’s hearth, long abandoned, which made way for the fire of Christ’s love!”

 

ICE HOUSE

Senior Grace Chen, ​who lives at Ice house, said she may know the origin.

“I think it’s because Kappas who lived there said ‘I can’t even’ so much that it became an acronym.”

 

JUNGLE

Looking at Jungle, it’s not hard to guess how the house got its name.

“The house was named ‘Jungle’ after the plentiful foliage that conceals and surrounds the house,” Jungle resident senior Charlie Albus said. “We actually have vines surrounding the doorways to the actual house and our garage. We have saplings in the door frames and different mosses in the gutters. If the indoors belong to us residents, the outside is surely owned de facto, if not de jure, by the greenery.”

Jungle has housed ATOs since the fall of 2020, Albus said.

“The seniors who lived there when we were freshmen leased it after it was clear that their class of ’22 in the fraternity could not all fit within Duplex, the older of the two ATO Manning Street houses,” Albus said.

MANNING STABLES

Senior Linnea Shively said stables has passed down through Chi Omegas.

“We are not sure how it got it’s name, but it looks like a barn from the outside,” Shively said.

 

MURDER SHACK

Senior Kaeleigh Otting lives in the former house of an infamous Hillsdale figure.

“‘Murder Shack’ got its name because originally when my parents purchased the house in the fall of 2022, it was a 600-square-foot tiny white house that looked kinda creepy,” Otting said.

With the addition of a second story, ‘Murder Shack’ has a new name: ‘Murder Mansion.’

 

POOLHOUSE

Poolhouse is one of the most newly named houses off campus. Senior Ashley DeMay said her house’s name is partially music-inspired.

“We love the song ‘Pool House’ by The Backseat Lovers, and there’s a lot of teal paint throughout the house that we wanted to emphasize in our decorations,” DeMay said.

 

RIVERSIDE

Senior Sarah Rands said Riverside’s name alludes to its location on campus.

“The house is blue and white and simply on the corner of River Street and Manning,” Rands said.

 

SANDLOT

Junior Luca Vitale said the exact origins of Sandlot’s name are a mystery.

“To my knowledge, it’s had the name for nearly a decade or longer,” Vitale said. “I don’t know if there’s anyone around who knows the story.”

According to Vitale, Sandlot used to house a group of baseball players, who named it after the baseball movie by the same name.

“I’ve never had that confirmed,” Vitale said.

 

SHOE FACTORY

One off-campus house has a highly literal name.

“Shoe Factory used to be a shoe factory, hence the name,” senior Anna Tencza, who lives there, said.

According to Tencza, the building was renovated and repurposed for student housing, still retaining much of the original exterior.

 

SKYFALL

The off-campus house Skyfall, though not currently student-occupied, has a dramatic event to thank for its name. According to former Skyfall resident Paul Miller ’24, when the house was originally rented out to students a decade ago, the group of ATOs living there had a party.

“The theme was based on seasons and the rooms were decorated accordingly,” Miller said. “The main living room was beach-themed and the residents filled the room with sand. During the party, the weight of all the people in the room combined with the sand caused the support beams in the basement to give out.”

Miller said the floor collapsed.

“The house was then called Skyfall in honor of the party, and remained that way regardless of whether it was ATOs or Sigma Chis who lived there,” Miller said.

A group of independents renamed the house ‘The Well’ when they lived there in the 2021-2022 academic year. When Miller and his friends came to Skyfall the following year, they restored the original name.

TORTUGA

Senior Colin Joyce and his brother, Luke Joyce ’24, came up with the name of their off-campus house, Tortuga.

“Tortuga was a famous pirate colony in the Caribbean, which matched the nautical theme for our interior,” Colin Joyce said. “We made laser engraved signs for all the rooms, naming them things like ‘The Crow’s Nest’ or ‘The Commodore.’ Tortuga was also the first independent nation to write into its constitution that all men are created equal, which kind of gave it a cool ‘pirate’s code’-type vibe.”

 

TRIPLEX

Senior Phoebe Vanheyningen lives in a house with a straightforward name.

“‘Triplex’ is called ‘Triplex’ just because it’s a 3-unit home,” Vanheyningen said. “This house has existed for quite a while — our landlord’s family has owned it since the ’50s and were responsible for turning it from a family home into a three unit collection of townhouses.”

 

WAFFLE HOUSE

Current Waffle House resident and senior Amanda Dover is not sure how the house received its name.

“It was likely named after Waffle House, the diner,” She said.

The house is recognizable for its mailbox, which has the Waffle House restaurant logo painted on it.

 “It’s a lot of fun because when you tell non-students you live at Waffle House, they have a puzzled look on their face, and the yellow mailbox brings so much joy,” she said.

 

WEST BANK

According to senior Julian Burchard,  West Bank is among the aptly-named West Street houses — with a twist.

“We inherited the name ‘West Bank’ from past generations of residents,” Burchard said. “We changed it to ‘Squirrel Bank’ because, before we moved in, apparently some squirrels had taken up residence in the walls.”

 

WEST EDEN

Belle Murphy ’23 was a resident of West Eden when its Steinbeck-inspired name was decided.

“We had a house-naming party and let people cast votes — a lot of the options were ‘West’ themed, since we were on West Street,” Murphy said. “‘West Eden’ was a play on Steinbeck’s ‘East of Eden,’ a favorite of many in our house.”

 

WEST WING

West Wing landlord Kirk Putnam said that, when he purchased the house in 2013, he wanted a way for it to be recognized by students.

“Since the house is on West Street, ‘West Wing’ was a logical choice,” Putnam said.

Senior Alydia Ullman said the name of the big white house is a nod to the actual White House.

After asking the tenants whether they liked that name, Putnam said he carefully made a sign in his garage with the name.

“After the first weekend, the sign had already disappeared, so the second sign I made needed to be attached to the house,” Putnam said. “So if someone really wanted it, they would have to put in the effort to take it.”

 

WIGWAM/WESSEX

According to Matt Sauer ’16 the house has undergone many name changes throughout the years.

“I had just taken Christian Humanism with Dr. Birzer where we read Chesterton’s ‘Ballad of the White Horse’ which is all about Alfred the Great, king of Wessex,” Sauer said. “In the ballad, Alfred calls on his men to be ‘little words’ that imitate the Word incarnate, and I thought that was a beautiful and noble way to imagine the Christian life. Dr. Jackson’s Anglo-Saxon Lit class also helped inform our ‘mead hall’ ethos, which helped balance out any piety that came from the Alfred the Great connection. Thus, Wessex was born.”

Leo Bykerk ’24 renamed the house long known as Wessex to ‘the Wigwam’ last year.

“Frankly, with Dang Doung living in the house, we needed a way to show that we were a racially diverse community,” Bykerk said. “We looked for a name that would really put that diversity on display, without offending anyone, and ‘the Wigwam’ fit the bill perfectly.”

Senior Brian Knewston said the name change was not immediately adopted by all.

“Having lived in the house when it was rechristened Wigwam, I use that name. Many of the other residents this year prefer the tradition that Wessex offers, which is OK,” Knewston said.

 

THE WOMB

This house has been out of the hands of students for three years, but is a longtime student house. Carl Vennerstrom ’12 explained how they landed on the name “the Womb.”

“There was a bit of debate in August of 2012. I think ‘the Womb’ was someone else’s idea, no one knows exactly. Some unmentionably sub-optimal names were thrown around. Poetic deep cuts and the like,” Vennerstrom said.

“But eventually Nicodemus’ question took root in our souls and we never turned back,” Vennerstrom said. “I obnoxiously shouted a lot, too. Tyler Herndon took the longest to soften to the maternal metaphor, if I remember correctly. He fought and she won, and now we’re all womb-mates unto the ages and ages.”

 

YELLOW HOUSE

Sophomore Maggie O’Connor said her house has a family legacy.

“When my parents bought 75 E. Fayette St. in 2019, it had been an off-campus house called ‘Brooklyn’ for many years,” O’Connor said. “ In 2021, when my older sister Jane [22] lived there, she rechristened it ‘Brookland,’ the name of the neighborhood in D.C. where my grandmother grew up.”

According to O’Connor, the house’s name remains Brookland, though some have taken to calling it a different name.

“My family has always called it Yellow House to distinguish it from the white house my parents live in down the street, called ‘White House,’” O’Connor said. “‘Yellow House’ has just stuck, I guess!”

 

8 MILE

Senior Veronica Crnkovich, a former resident of 8 Mile, said a group of ATOs gave the house its name.

“Its address is 8 River St., so instead of 8 River they just called it ‘8 Mile’ from the movie ‘8 Mile’ with Eminem,” Crnkovich said.