Stanford University student housing

Stanford University has always provided some on-campus housing for students and now makes on-campus student housing available to all undergraduates and many graduate students. Around 96% of undergraduates attending classes at the main campus live on campus as do 62% of eligible graduate students.^[1] The program is run by the Stanford's Residential Education office (generally called ResEd).^[2]

Undergraduate housing is organized as being East Campus, West Campus, or the Row. East Campus has the complexes of Stern, Wilbur, and Manzanita Park and the standalones of Branner, Toyon, Mirrielees, and Crothers and a small section of Rains (most of the Rains complex is graduate student housing). West Campus has the complexes of Florence Moore Hall, Lagunita Court, and Governor's Corner and the standalone Roble Hall; it also includes the small section of Oak Creek apartments that Stanford is subletting. The Row is on the south-east to south side of campus and consists of about 3 dozen houses housing between 25 and 60 students each. These include the 7 fraternity houses and 3 sorority houses (as of 2014/2015). Married (or officially partnered) undergraduates or those with children are housed with graduate students.

Graduate housing consists of Escondido Village, Rains houses, Munger Graduate Residences, or Schwab Residential Center on East Campus and the Lyman Graduate Residences on West Campus. Students with children live in the Escondido Village low-rises. Due to the difficulty of finding reasonably priced off-campus housing and shortage of on-campus housing, Stanford has also leased a large number of off-campus apartments and subleases them to graduate students.^[3]

History

The architects of Stanford University originally proposed that student housing consist of cottages each housing 15 to 25 students with the cottages for the men to the south-east of the main quad of the university and for the women to the south-west.^[4] The founders, Leland and Jane Stanford, rejected the idea and decided that the recently built Hôtel Kursaal de la Maloja in Switzerland would be the model for the original men's dorm, Encina Hall, housing 300.^[4] Encina Hall proved problematic as a dorm and now houses the administrative offices and the Political Science department. Encina Hall was built well to the east of the Main Quad while the first women's dorm, the original Roble Hall, was built well to the west of the Main Quad just before the university opened in 1891 (about a half a mile separated the two halls). The name, Roble Hall, was later moved to the current Roble Hall (built 1917) and the original building renamed Sequoia Hall, used as a men's dorm then the Statistics department, and eventually torn down in 1996.

East side Branner and Toyon Halls were built in the 1920s for men and west side Lagunita Court was built in the 1930s in part to house the growing number of women after the hard cap of 500 women students was partially lifted. East side Stern and Wilbur halls were built in the 1940s again to house men and west side Florence Moore Hall in 1956 for women. The later 1960s and early 1970s saw all the residence halls become co-ed. No new halls will then built for some time though the Manzanita trailer park was set up in 1969 to provide cheap housing. In the early 1980s west side Sterling Quad was built and in the early 1990s east side Kimball, Castaño, and Lantana Halls were built on what had been the trailer park.

In addition to the residence halls there are also the Row Houses for undergraduates; many were originally fraternity or sorority houses though only 10 of the current 35 are now.^[5]

Graduate student residence halls also were built such as Crothers and Crothers Memorial in the 1950s for male law students and engineers respectively (these are now undergraduate residences) though most graduate housing are apartment complexes such as Lyman opened in 1997, Munger, Rains, and Schwab (the last has priority for business students) and the multitude of apartment complexes in Escondido Village. Escondido village also has many town houses, known as "low-rises", where students with children can live and its own elementary school, Escondido School part of the Palo Alto Unified School District.

East Campus (undergraduate)

Branner Hall

Branner Hall is a coed upper-class (i.e., no freshmen) dormitory with a focus on public service. It houses 125 students, mostly in two-room doubles. It is named after University President John Casper Branner. It was built in 1924 and was designed by the San Francisco firm of Bakewell and Brown. It was originally an all-male dormitory and later all-female before becoming coed.^[6]

Crothers Hall

Crothers hall is an upperclass residence split into two dorms named Crothers Hall and Crothers Memorial (CroMem). The dorm now has a global citizenship focus. Both Crothers Hall and Crothers Memorial are a mix of single rooms and one room doubles. The dorm is named after an early student and later trustee of the university, George E. Crothers. Both were originally built as graduate residences; Crothers Hall in 1948 for law students and Crothers Memorial in 1955 for engineering students (the latter provided the name for Cromemco, an early Silicon Valley company). They were designed by Eldridge Spencer and William Ambrose.^[7]

Manzanita Park

Manzanita Park consists of four houses: Kimball Hall, Castaño, Lantana, and the Humanities Theme Residence, with a central dining area. Kimball Hall is named for the primary donors, William and Sara Kimball, and opened in 1991.^[8] The Humanities Theme Residence, also known as Humanities House, was completed in 2015 and was the first new undergraduate residence constructed on campus in 20 years.^[9] The three-story buildings house approximately 550 students, all upperclassmen (no freshmen), in a mix of single rooms, double rooms, and three-person quads. They are built on the site of a former trailer park in use for student housing since 1967.^[10]

Stern Hall

Larkin West in Stern Hall

Lucie Stern Hall, named for a generous Stanford donor, was built in 1948 and renovated in 1995. Its style represents "Stanford’s brief departure into architectural modernism" by not following the usual Stanford pattern of sandstone-colored, arcaded buildings with red tile roofs. It comprises six houses that accommodate about 100 students each; some are all-freshman houses and others are four-class. The houses named for California pioneers are Burbank, named for Luther Burbank; Donner; Larkin; Serra, named for Junípero Serra; and Twain, named for Mark Twain; the sixth house is Casa Zapata and has a Chicano-Latino cross-cultural theme.^[11]

Toyon Hall

Entrance to Toyon Hall.

Toyon Hall is an all-sophomore dorm, designed by Bakewell and Brown and built in 1923 to house 150 men.^[12] Toyon was the home of the Stanford Eating Clubs, a system of originally all-male organizations which served a social function as well as a food service plan. The eating clubs became co-ed during the 1970s, and the eating club system was abolished in 2009.

Wilbur Hall

Wilbur Hall houses 707 students in eight houses surrounding a common dining complex. It is named for Stanford's third president, Ray Lyman Wilbur. It was built in the late 1940s and represents an architectural departure from Stanford's usual theme of sandstone-colored, arcaded buildings with red tile roofs. Originally built for male students, it is now coed. Seven of the houses (Arroyo, Cedro, Junipero, Otero, Rinconada, Soto and Trancos) are all-freshman houses; Okada (originally Madera) is a four-class house with an Asian American cross-cultural theme.^[13]

West Campus (undergraduate)

Florence Moore Hall

Front of Florence Moore Hall with Alondra on the left and Paloma on the right

Florence Moore Hall, often abbreviated as FloMo, consists of seven different houses: Alondra, Cardenal, Faisan, Gavilan, Loro, Mirlo, and Paloma.^[14] It was built in 1956 as a women's dormitory; today all seven buildings are co-ed. Three of the houses are the home of the Structured Liberal Education program.

Governor's Corner

Sterling Quad

The main entrance to Sterling Quad, from Santa Teresa Street.

Potter House in Governor's Corner

Sterling Quad was built in 1982-83, making it one of the newest dormitories on campus. It comprises four houses: Adams, Schiff, Robinson, and Potter. The four houses share a dining and performance hall called Ricker Center.^[15] Sterling Quad is named for J. E. Wallace Sterling, former president of the University (1949–1968). Adams is named for Ephraim Douglass Adams, a history professor who was also the first chairman of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives. Schiff is named after physics professor Leonard I. Schiff, who was the first chair of the Faculty Senate at Stanford. Potter is named for history professor David M. Potter and Robinson for yet another history professor Edgar Eugene Robinson,^[16] who chaired the Independent Study Program, precursor to the present Departmental Honors program.^[17]

Freshman-Sophomore College

Adams House

Adams and Schiff form what is known as the Freshman-Sophomore College (FroSoCo), a two-year residential college founded in the 1999-2000 school year. FroSoCo houses approximately 100 freshmen (by application only) and 60 sophomores (choosing to return after living there as freshmen). It attempts to provide "the vibrant residential intellectual community of a small, elite, liberal-arts college while providing enhanced access to the academic resources of one of the world’s premier research universities".^[18] FroSoCo has its own Dean and additional support staff compared to other dormitories.

Suites

Griffin House

The suites are apartment-style houses for upperclass students and are housed in Anderson, Griffin, Jenkins and Marx (a theme house).^[19] The names of the suites honor former Stanford academic leaders and faculty members: Melville Best Anderson, the first head of the English department; James Owen Griffin, who was invited by President Jordan as one of the first faculty; Oliver Peebles Jenkins, first professor of Physiology and Zoology; and Charles David Marx, the first professor of Civil Engineering. Meals for the suites are served in four Dining Clubs: Avanti, Beefeater, Bollard and Middle Earth.

Independent houses

The independent houses are Yost, Murray, and EAST Houses. EAST is a theme house with an orientation toward teaching and education; the name stands for Education and Society Theme House.^[19]

Lagunita Court

Lagunita Court, usually called "Lag" (pronounced "log"), was built in the 1930s and renovated in 1998. It is named for the adjacent, seasonal lake Lagunita. It consists of six small residential buildings, or "houses", arranged around a central courtyard. The houses are Eucalipto, Granada and Adelfa on the west side, and Naranja and Ujamaa (which consists of two buildings formerly named Olivo and Magnolia) on the east. Ujamaa is the home of the African American theme program and Adelfa has a writing focus. Originally built for women students, Lag is now coed.^[20]

Roble Hall

Roble Hall, built in 1917 and designed by architect George W. Kelham, is the oldest dormitory at Stanford still in use as a dormitory. It was built as a women's dormitory and later was used exclusively for freshman women; it was converted to a coed residence in 1968.

Notes

Coordinates: 37°25′30″N 122°10′45″W / 37.42500°N 122.17917°W / 37.42500; -122.17917