St. Anthony Hall

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St. Anthony Hall, also Saint Anthony Hall and The Order of St. Anthony, is a national college literary society also known by the Greek name of Delta Psi (ΔΨ). The first, or 'Alpha' Chapter was founded at Columbia University on January 17, 1847—the feast day of St. Anthony—its patron saint is Anthony of Egypt, patron saint of writers. The organization is often referred to as "St. A's" or "the Hall." It has no official religious affiliation.

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[edit] General Information

The organization's first, or 'Alpha' Chapter was founded on January 17, 1847 at Columbia University. A 'Beta' Chapter at NYU was also founded in 1847, but by 1853 had been 'united' with the Alpha[[1]], and by 1879, Columbia College's Record listed the NYU founders alongside its own Columbia students.[[2]]

The majority of St. Anthony Hall chapters still own the Gilded Age chapter houses its 19th Century socially prominent members commissioned from well-known architects. Today, St. A's is self-described as a literary society, and in accordance with the respective traditions of each college, is variously referred to on those campuses as a fraternity (or co-ed fraternity), a literary society, a secret society, or a private club.

At each school, the Order of St. Anthony maintains a chapter house colloquially referred to as "The Hall" or "St. A's", although at MIT, the society is known as "The Number Six Club" in reference to that chapter's original founding and residence at No. 6 Louisburg Square in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood. At Yale, the St. A's building is referred to, though less often, as a 'tomb', the traditional appellation for structures on campus in which secret societies meet. Diving deeper into Yale terminology: strictly speaking, the 'Sheff' societies' 'halls' were separate residential buildings, and members gathered elsewhere on campus for rituals in their 'tombs.' The Yale St. A's' building was 'hall' (residential), 'Hall' (its name) and 'tomb' (for its formal meetings), until the Trustees of Yale's chapter ceded the formerly residential wing of their building to Yale in the 1950s. That adjacent wing now houses Yale academic offices and a plaque in the entry marks the gift.

According to its national website, St. Anthony Hall originally began as a "fraternity dedicated to the love of education and the well-being of its members." Chapters were founded throughout the Northeast, and extended into the South during the mid-1800s. During the Civil War, formal contact ended between Northern and Southern chapters. The Order's history states that "many members wore their badges into battle, serving with distinction on both sides, and were often reunited in both pleasant and antagonistic situations throughout the war." (See the Baird's Manual excerpt below for a near-contemporary account of the disposition of the chapters following the Civil War.)

Because their patron, Anthony of Egypt is often depicted with his Tau Cross, the symbol has been used to embellish the architecture of some St. A's chapter houses. St. Anthony also became a swineherd, hence Hall members sentimentally regard the pig, one of the Saint's 'attributes', as an informal mascot. However the fraternity has never had any religious affiliation; the inspiration provided by this ascetic saint (and his pig) is solely thematic.

[edit] Membership

Chapters of St. Anthony Hall demonstrate a range of membership formats and reputations. Whether known on their campuses as social fraternities, clubs, secret societies, or by other models, all nonetheless publicly articulate a literary focus, in keeping with St. Anthony being patron saint of writers. The chapters exhibit diverse characteristics with regard to campus presence, secrecy, and exclusivity.

Main article: List of St. Anthony Hall Members

[edit] Co-education

In 1971, because it was at Yale a three-year secret society, and could therefore tap underclassmen a year before the junior class "tap" that is customary for entry to the senior societies, St. A's became the earliest Yale society to accept women as members, after the college became co-ed in 1969.

The Yale chapter's action also accomplished, albeit not without friction, co-education as a permitted status within the national fraternity. Other St. A's chapters subsequently became co-ed at the following schools: Columbia University, Trinity College, Princeton University, Brown University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Three of the chapters—at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia and the University of Mississippi—remain all-male by choice and the organization accommodates these differences, listing both types on its national website.

[edit] In popular culture

  • Lisa Birnbach, ed. The Official Preppy Handbook, Workman Publishing, 1980. "St. A’s appeals to the ‘cool element’ of Preppies at Yale; this means Preppies who don’t iron their shirts. It isn’t rowdy: parties there conform to the intellectual self-image Yalies hold dear."
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald, in several short stories, refers to the Pump and Slipper, an annual party at the Yale Chapter:
    • "May Day" in "Tales of the Jazz Age" "A man with prominent teeth cut in. Edith inhaled a slight cloud of whiskey. She liked men to have had something to drink; they were so much more cheerful, and appreciative and complimentary--much easier to talk to. "My name's Dean, Philip Dean," he said cheerfully. "You don't remember me, I know, but you used to come up to New Haven with a fellow I roomed with senior year, Gordon Sterrett." Edith looked up quickly. "Yes, I went up with him twice--to the Pump and Slipper and the Junior prom."
    • "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" "Warren was nineteen and rather pitying with those of his friends who hadn't gone East to college. But, like most boys, he bragged tremendously about the girls of his city when he was away from it. There was Genevieve Ormonde, who regularly made the rounds of dances, house-parties, and football games at Princeton, Yale, Williams, and Cornell; there was black-eyed Roberta Dillon, who was quite as famous to her own generation as Hiram Johnson or Ty Cobb; and, of course, there was Marjorie Harvey, who besides having a fairylike face and a dazzling, bewildering tongue was already justly celebrated for having turned five cart-wheels in succession during the last pump-and-slipper dance at New Haven."
    • "A Short Trip Home", Saturday Evening Post, January 17, 1927. Joe Jelke and two other boys were along, and none of the three could manage to take their eyes off her, even to say hello to me. She had one of those exquisite rose skins frequent in our part of the country, and beautiful until the little veins begin to break at about forty; now, flushed with the cold, it was a riot of lovely delicate pinks like many carnations. She and Joe had reached some sort of reconciliation, or at least he was too far gone in love to remember last night; but I saw that though she laughed a lot she wasn't really paying any attention to him or any of them. She wanted them to go, so that there'd be a message from the kitchen, but I knew that the message wasn't coming--that she was safe. There was talk of the Pump and Slipper dance at New Haven and of the Princeton Prom, and then, in various moods, we four left and separated quickly outside. I walked home with a certain depression of spirit and lay for an hour in a hot bath thinking that vacation was all over for me now that she was gone; feeling, even more deeply than I had yesterday, that she was out of my life.
  • 1923 M.I.T. campus newspaper reference to "Select Wittstein" providing music for the Pump and Slipper and the Yale Prom in New Haven. [4]

[edit] Notable Architects of St. Anthony Hall Chapter Houses

Hornbostel, circa 1899: Alpha Chapter, New York
Hornbostel, circa 1899: Alpha Chapter, New York
Heins & LaFarge, 1894-1913, Sigma Chapter, without dormitory wing, New Haven
Heins & LaFarge, 1894-1913, Sigma Chapter, without dormitory wing, New Haven
Heins & LaFarge, 1894-1913, with later-added dormitory, New Haven. Old York Hall (now Stoeckel Hall) also visible.
Heins & LaFarge, 1894-1913, with later-added dormitory, New Haven. Old York Hall (now Stoeckel Hall) also visible.
Haight, 1913-current, Sigma Chapter, New Haven
Haight, 1913-current, Sigma Chapter, New Haven
Gage, 1902-1904: former St. Anthony Club, New York
Gage, 1902-1904: former St. Anthony Club, New York
  • James Renwick, Jr., firm of. (Columbia University Chapter prior to 1899, still standing at 29 E. 28th Street, New York, "Old photographs show a high stoop arrangement with the figure of an owl on the peeked roof and a plaque with the Greek letters Delta Psi over the windowless chapter room. In 1879 The New York Tribune called it French Renaissance, but the stumpy pilasters and blocky detailing suggest the Neo-Grec style then near the end of its popularity." [[6]])
  • Stanford White, firm of McKim, Mead, and White. (Former Williams College chapter (believed defunct), currently houses Center for Development Economics[[23]], 1886, "Old English-style".)[[24]] Pictured at: [[25]]
  • S.E. Gage [[26]] (16 East 64th Street, New York, originally erected 1878-79 and redesigned by Gage between 1902-1904 in the Neo-Federal style for St. Anthony Hall.)[[27]] Until around 1990, it was the St. Anthony Club, a city club for St. A's members. Interior details described include limestone columns, a detailed, wrought-iron front door and gate, a limestone and marble entry foyer, and a bronze and wrought-iron main staircase. In addition, the townhouse boasted ornate moldings, high ceilings, skylights, oak Versailles parquet floors and six wood-burning fireplaces.[[28]] It is also included in a walking tour of 64th Street[[29]]. The five story twenty foot wide brownstone is on a historically distinguished residential street.[[30]][[31]] In the early 1970s, the Barnard College Club leased space in the St. Anthony Club. [[32]]

[edit] Exclusions and Obsolete Chapters

The Delta Psi Fraternity at the University of Vermont was founded in 1850 by Professor John Ellsworth Goodrich [[33]] and was always unrelated[[34]]. It also is apparently only recently defunct.[[35]]

In 1879, Baird's Manual (see Wikisource, the free library of source texts.[[36]]), contained an extensive Delta Psi/St. Anthony Hall chapter list. Baird's characterized the organization, at that time, as having "the reputation of being the most secret of all the college societies." Chapters at the end of the 19th century were: Alpha, Columbia College, 1847. Beta, New York University, 1847 (died 1853). Gamma, Rutgers College, 1848 (died 1850). Delta, Burlington College, 1819; transferred to Delta, University of Pennsylvania, 1854. Epsilon, Trinity College (Connecticut), 1850. Eta, South Carolina College, 1850 (died 1861). Theta, Princeton College, 1851 (died 1863). Iota, Rochester University, 1851. Kappa, Brown University, 1852 (died 1853). Lambda, Williams College, 1853. Sigma, Randolph-Macon College, 1853 (died 1861). Xi, North Carolina University, 1851 (died 1863). Psi, Cumberland University, 1858 (died 1861). Phi, Mississippi University, 1855. Upsilon, University of Virginia, 1860. Sigma, Sheffield Scientific School (i.e. Yale), 1868. Theta, Washington-Lee University, 1869. Baird's 1999 edition amends the last listing for Washington and Lee as Beta (defunct). This edition appeared unaware of the re-founding of the Princeton Theta Chapter in 1986, erroneously listing that as Theta's last year.

Baird's text also noted information regarding the effects of the Civil War, -- then just forty years past-- on the movement, and contemporary references to several of the fraternity chapter buildings that still exist today: "The Beta Chapter was declared extinct in 1853, and its members affiliated with the Alpha. The Gamma and Theta disbanded. The Alpha has a fine chapter house in East Twenty-eighth Street, New York City.[[37]] The Epsilon has one of the most expensive chapter houses in the country,[[38]] forty thonsand dollars having been given for that purpose by one of the members. The Kappa Chapter is generally repudiated by the fraternity, but its official existence was recognized in the catalogue draft of 1876. The Southern Chapters were killed by the war, and only the Phi and Upsilon were revived at its close. The Lambda owns a chapter house[[39]], and the Iota and one or two others have building funds." (1879 text, from Wikisource.)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

North-American Interfraternity Conference
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