St. Anthony Hall

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circa 1873 symbol [1] from the University of Pennsylvania Record undergraduate yearbook

St. Anthony Hall, also known as Saint Anthony Hall and The Order of St. Anthony, is a national college society formerly known as the Fraternity of Delta Psi (ΔΨ). The first, or 'Alpha' Chapter was founded at Columbia University on January 17, 1847, which is the feast day of St. Anthony.

In 1879, Baird's Manual (see Wikisource [2]) characterized the organization as having "the reputation of being the most secret of all the college societies." References appear in several F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories, and the Order has a distinguished architectural inheritance. The organization is often referred to as "St. A's" or "the Hall." It has no official religious affiliation. See also List of St. Anthony Hall Members.

1 General Information
2 Membership
3 Activities
4 St. Anthony Hall Chapter Houses
5 Exclusions and Obsolete Chapters
6 In popular culture
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] General Information

In 1847, after the organization's 'Alpha' Chapter was founded on January 17 at Columbia University, a 'Beta' Chapter at NYU was also founded, but by 1853 had been 'united' with the Alpha[3]. By 1879, Columbia College's Record listed the NYU founders alongside its own Columbia students.[4]

The current undergraduate chapters of St. Anthony Hall, according to its website, are the following:

Alpha: Columbia University, New York, NY
Delta: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Epsilon: Trinity College, Hartford, CT
Theta: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Kappa: Brown University, Providence, RI [5]
Xi: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Phi: University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS
Sigma: Yale University, New Haven, CT
Upsilon: University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Tau: MIT, Cambridge, MA

At some universities, 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.

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.
Archive photo of Civil War officer killed at Gettysburg, who signed his portrait "Yours in Delta Psi" [6]

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.

Some Hall-related websites misidentify St. Anthony as the patron saint of writers. As a hermit and founder of monasticism, Anthony is identified with the "book of nature" and not writing. St. Anthony was the focus of a Roman Catholic Hospital Order which flourished from the 13th to 18th centuries and was responsible for treating the effects of ergot poisoning or St. Anthony's Fire. Today's Alpha chapter is decorated with prints of "The Temptation of St. Anthony" as well as the mythic symbol the "Owl of Minerva."

[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, most nonetheless publicly articulate a literary focus. The chapters exhibit diverse characteristics with regard to campus presence, secrecy, and exclusivity.

In 1971, because it was at Yale a 'final society (tapping members during their sophomore 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. A member of St. A's at the University of North Carolina became the first person of color to pledge any fraternity at that campus, in 1967. [7]

Other St. A's chapters subsequently became co-ed at the following schools: Columbia University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Trinity College, and Princeton University.
The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia chapters remain all-male by choice, while the University of Mississippi chapter is all-male due to local law.

St. Anthony Hall chapters accommodate each others' different policies, and the national organization lists both types on its website.

Main article: List of St. Anthony Hall Members

[edit] Activities

Student St. A's members at various chapters pursue their literary mandate through different programs. The Columbia and University of North Carolina chapters have published poetry journals. Also at the University of North Carolina, the chapter hosts events open to the community such as "Poetry, Prose and Pancakes" and "Haiku Kung Fu". The Brown University Chapter publishes a literary and visual arts magazine, also available online, called "The Sketchbook." The Trinity College chapter endows a St. Anthony Professorship in Art History, several annual prizes for Trinity students, and an annual public lecture, named for Martin W. Clement, Class of 1901.[8] Yale's chapter sponsors a public series of lectures every two to three weeks on literature, poetry, art and current affairs in general. (It is compared to but more generalized than the annual Maynard Mack Lecture of Yale's Elizabethan Club, down the block, whose sessions with actors and directors focus on Shakespeare’s era.) The Yale St. Anthony Hall lectures, some co-sponsored with the Yale Review recently have included Tom Perotta, Ilya Kaminsky, Tao Lin, Dave Eggers, Roddy Lumsden, Elizabeth Bear, Vona Groarke, Conor O'Callaghan, John Guare, Claire Messud, Elizabeth Alexander, William Deresiewicz, Richard Wilbur, Henri Cole, Chris Adrian, Heidi Julavits, Joseph Harrison, Mark Strand, Wayne Koestenbaum, Dana Levin, Irving Feldman, John Butler, Maurice Manning, Peter Orszag, Michael Donaghy, Paul Muldoon, Martin Puryear, Robert Young Pelton, Rosa DeLauro, Donald Kagan, Bhagavan Das, Robert Stone, Peter Matthiessen, Agha Shahid Ali, Richard Selzer, Naomi Wolf, Carl Andre, Richard Haas, Robert P. De Vecchi, Thomas Fingar, Larry Kramer, Frank Deford, Paul Kennedy, and Christo.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]

[edit] St. Anthony Hall Chapter Houses

The majority of St. Anthony Hall chapters still own the Victorian, Gilded Age and Beaux Arts chapter houses some of its socially prominent members commissioned from well-known 19th and early 20th century architects. One of the buildings, at Yale, (its third on that campus), when donated by Frederick William Vanderbilt in 1913, was described by the New York Times as "the most expensive and elaborate secret society building in the United States."[17] Today, in accordance with the respective traditions of each chapter, St. A's is variously self-described and referred to on different campuses as a fraternity (or co-ed fraternity), a literary society, a secret society, or a private club.

Hornbostel, circa 1899: Alpha Chapter, New York

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.

Haight, 1913-current, Sigma Chapter, New Haven

Renwick, 1879: Original Alpha Chapter House, Columbia University, when located in downtown NYC. (Now a restaurant/apartment bldg.)

Stone, Carpenter & Willson, 1895, Kappa Chapter, Brown University, Providence

Gage, 1902-1904: former St. Anthony Club, New York

Breuer, 1970, showing St. Anthony 'Tau Cross' motif, commissioned by St. A's member Henry P. Becton

St. Anthony Hall Buildings

• Architectural credit may be shared for the Columbia University Chapter prior to 1899, still standing at 29 E. 28th Street, New York. Either the Firm of James Renwick, Jr., and attributable to the master architect's hand -- or at least supervision -- or specifically, William Hamilton Russell (1856-1907), an architect in the firm (and great-nephew of Renwick) and then-recent graduate of St. Anthony Hall. Old photographs show a high stoop arrangement with the figure of an owl on the peaked 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. At the turn of the century, when the building became a club for graduate members of the fraternity and a new undergraduate house was built at 115th Street, a newspaper account described the 28th Street house as "a perfect Bijou of tasteful decoration." [18] Upon graduation in 1887, Russell became a protege of his great uncle, James Renwick, Jr., the same year Renwick completed his best-known triumph St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. It is likely Russell contributed work to his fraternity's first chapter house during his apprenticeship. [19] Another article in the New York Times (1987) asserts that Russell was actually responsible (while in Renwick's firm) for the building. [20] Another of Renwick's proteges, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, was architect of the Wolf's Head tomb at Yale. Russell later was Partner in his own firm Clinton & Russell, founded in 1894.

• Henry Hornbostel, William Palmer (a St. A's member), and Eric Fisher Wood, firm of Wood, Palmer and Hornbostel. (Columbia University Chapter since 1899, Late 19th And 20th Century Revivals. Added in 1996 to National Register of Historic Places building #96000484 as "Delta Psi, Alpha Chapter" [21])

• Wilson Eyre, Jr. (University of Pennsylvania Chapter 1889-1908, Italianate Palazzo.) Cited as first fraternity house built on campus and pictured at [22]. Near the old Penn campus across the Schuylkill from the current site.

•Cope & Stewardson. (University of Pennsylvania Chapter after 1908, Late Gothic Revival, Late 19th And 20th Century Revivals, added in 2005 to National Register of Historic Places building - #05000064 as "St. Anthony Hall House" [23][24][25]) Also described and pictured in 1918 in [26]

• J.P. Fuller (Former chapter house of M.I.T. Chapter prior to 20th century, designed 1826; built 1834-37, Greek Revival, within historic Louisburg Square.) Cited and pictured at [27].

• J. Cleaveland Cady. (Trinity College Chapter, 1878) Commissioned by member Robert Habersham Coleman, the iron baron, rusticated Richardsonian Romanesque. J.C. Cady was also a Trinity Chapter St. Anthony Hall member. He erected several buildings at Yale (see Non-hall below). [28] At a cost of $40,000, it was considered at the time to be one of the most expensive fraternity chapter houses in America. Added in 1985 to the National Register of Historic Places, building #85001017 as "Saint Anthony Hall", the Epsilon Chapter house is the oldest of the Saint Anthony Hall fraternity buildings. The building has recently undergone extensive interior restorations. An exterior addition, in harmony with the original construction, has been added to comply with local building code requirements. J.C. Cady was also the architect of several prominent buildings in New York City, most notably the old Metropolitan Opera House and the south section of the American Museum of Natural History. [29] Pictured at [30]

• Heins & LaFarge. Architects George Lewis Heins and Christopher Grant LaFarge (the son of the stained glass artist John LaFarge). (Yale Chapter building from 1894-1913, no longer extant, but its ornamental iron gates re-used in the 1913 building, Richardsonian Romanesque.) Described in [31] and [32] and pictured at: [33]

• Charles C. Haight (Yale Chapter, circa 1913, a commission of member Frederick William Vanderbilt to match the flanking donated dormitories (dated 1903-06) now part of Silliman College, neo-Gothic.) Described in [34] and pictured at [35]

• Harleston Parker Medal namesake J. Harleston Parker, founder with Douglas H. Thomas, Jr. and Arthur W. Rice, of firm Parker, Thomas & Rice. See " The Architecture of Jefferson Country: Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia" By K. Edward Lay, UVA Press, ISBN 0813918855, p. 287" (University of Virginia, 1902, Colonial Revival or "Jeffersonian". First fraternity house built on campus. [36]) Pictured at: [37]

• Stanford White, firm of McKim, Mead, and White. (Former Williams College chapter), currently houses Center for Development Economics[38], 1886, "Old English-style".)[39]

• S.E. Gage [40] (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.)[41] 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.[42] It is also included in a walking tour of 64th Street[43]. The five story twenty foot wide brownstone is on a historically distinguished residential street.[44][45] In the early 1970s, the Barnard College Club leased space in the St. Anthony Club. [46]

•Stone, Carpenter, and Willson, (Kappa Chapter, Brown University Chapter, 154 Hope Street, Providence, RI, erected 1895, Colonial Revival). Originally a private residence, then until 1969 owned by Bryant University as its administration building formerly named 'Taft House' for its first owners Robert W. and Alice Taft. Unfortunately, an extensive formal garden to its west was replaced with parking. Renamed King House in 1974 in honor of Lida Shaw King, former dean of Pembroke College.[47] Historic American Buildings Survey data at: [48]

Related Non-Hall Campus Buildings:

• Additional Josiah Cleaveland Cady. An Epsilon Chapter (Trinity College) member, Cady in 1873 built the Yale Sheffield Scientific School's first new building, North Sheffield Hall, on what had been the gardens of the Town-Sheffield mansion. This was followed by his Winchester Hall (1892) and Sheffield Chemical (1894-5). Of these, only the latter, Sheffield Chemical, is still standing, renovated and renamed Arthur K. Watson Hall.

• Marcel Breuer. Subsequent to the merger of the 'Sheff' with Yale College, but within its original precincts, Yale St. A's Chapter member and benefactor Henry P. Becton (BS 1937), son of Becton Dickinson co-founder Maxwell Becton, donated the Becton Center (designed by Marcel Breuer), opened in 1970, replacing Winchester Hall and North Sheffield, mentioned above. Breuer cenceived the building "...as a wall that folded horizontally and vertically, with pipes and ducts located in the folds..." Located at 15 Prospect Street, the building's most distinctive feature is an arcade of monumental Tau Cross-shaped concrete columns "designed to invite pedestrians." It appears as a visual reference to the benefactor's society, whose emblem is the Tau Cross; the buildings are within each others' view along the axis formed by Prospect and College Streets. Described and pictured at: [49] and [50]

• A late 19th/early 20th c. chapter house of the University of Mississippi's St. Anthony Hall Phi Chapter subsequently was an on-campus childhood home of later Nobel Laureate author William Faulkner, although Rowan Oak is better known for having been his home when he achieved greatness. The older house was a large brick turreted edifice where the Alumni Center Hotel now stands. The Falkners lived in it during the period 1912-22 when fraternities were outlawed and was the first building of note that incoming freshmen saw when they walked from the train station into campus. It and a successor burned down. The Cofield photographic Collection [ISBN-13: 978-0916242022], p. 58, cites Faulkner's younger brother Dean for information that young William's room was in the tower. Referenced in University of Mississippi photographic archive: [51]

[edit] Exclusions and Obsolete Chapters

The Delta Psi Fraternity at the University of Vermont was founded in 1850 by Professor John Ellsworth Goodrich [52] and was always unrelated[53]. It also is apparently only recently defunct.[54]

In 1879, Baird's Manual (see Wikisource, the free library of source texts.[55]), 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, 1849; 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).

The Xi Chapter was re-founded in 1926, as was the Phi Chapter, which had become extinct in 1912. The Kappa Chapter at Brown was re-founded in 1983[56], and the Theta Chapter at Princeton in 1986. The 1999 edition of Baird's appeared unaware of the re-founding of Theta, 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 Order, 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.[57] The Epsilon has one of the most expensive chapter houses in the country,[58] forty thousand 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[59], and the Iota and one or two others have building funds." (1879 text, from Wikisource.)

[edit] In popular culture

The society tabloid Gawker said "In the constellation of collegiate societies—fraternities, sororities, eating clubs, finals clubs, and the like—few are more exclusive, and WASPy, as St. Anthony Hall, or St. A's as it is commonly known..." [60]
In December 1967, during a week-long fellowship on campus, then-California Governor Ronald Reagan was filmed for public television informally debating Yale students at the Yale St. Anthony Hall. Nancy Reagan is also present, as the Yalies quiz the Governor on Vietnam and various social justice issues. [61]
John O'Hara, in his 1960 novel Ourselves to Know, uses St. Anthony Hall membership in the characterizations of the protagonists: "Did you join a fraternity at Penn?" I said. "Yes I did. St Anthony-Delta Psi. But I think they were sorry that they invited me..." --- "I happened to know, because I had seen it, that he had a Delta Psi Tea Company gold charm on his watch chain, but the reason he did not show it was one of delicacy; in 1908 they had not accepted his resignation but he kept the insigne hidden..." --- "He and Robert quickly looked at each other's watch-chain and the Delta Psi charm and smiled. "You know, I've been meaning to write you a letter..." ("Tea" Company was a then-used appellation referring to the fraternity's Tau Cross emblem.)
During the Klondike Gold Rush Fall of 1897 Jack London was a tenant in Dawson of two mining engineers who were graduates of Yale named Marshall Bond and Louis Bond. Among the other cabin residents was the son of John LaFarge, Oliver H P LaFarge I . The three men had the cabin designated a chapter house. Thus much of the period that London was in the Klondike he was a St. Anthony's guest. The cabin residents inspired many characters in Jack London stories including "The Call of the Wild".
The "St. Ray's" fraternity in Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons is purportedly modeled after the Delta Chapter —"St. A's"— at the University of Pennsylvania where Wolfe attended a fraternity cocktail party while conducting research for the book in 2001. [62]
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 MIT campus newspaper reference to "Select Wittstein" providing music for the Pump and Slipper and the Yale Prom in New Haven. [63]

Article purporting to describe the Columbia and Yale chapters, Yale Daily News. [64]

[edit] See also

Collegiate secret societies in North America
[65] Reference in 1873 volume "University Record (University of Pennsylvania), p. 13, 2nd column, under section "Secret Fraternities", eight unnamed members.
Robbins, Alexandra. Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power. Back Bay Books, 2003. ISBN 0-316-73561-2 o