Welcome
Feel free to click around our house
Library
This was the professional library that Mr. Andrew used, which is evident by all of the national Congressional Records as well as the state Congressional Records. The book collection also contains books by Goethe, Chi Phi Tablets from our inception, some personal books of Mr. Andrew, a 1730 book about the history of England up until that point, and a handwritten transcription of Homeros' Illiad in Greak and Latin. Many are in their original texts.
Now, the Library is used as a quiet reading room and a space to tackle the hard MIT problem sets.
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Main Hall
In here, the large window is called a Palladian window and is reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance styles. All around the room, there are different hand-carved busts in the wood. Around the room, there is a repeating pattern of animals, including two beavers (MIT's mascot)
In here, the large window is called a Palladian window and is reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance styles. All around the room, there are different hand-carved busts in the wood. Around the room, there is a repeating pattern of animals, including two beavers (MIT's mascot)
Main Stairs
The main stairs are partly the reason why the house has become an historical landmark. (The other being the fact that we can keep the balcony from the Tuileries Palace.) In the '60s, a fire inspector came in and determined that the stairs needed to be bricked up because it was a fire hazard. We managed to prevent this by getting the house declared as an historical landmark.
Study
This was originally the servants' dining room. Now it serves as the Study where many brothers and new members can be found working on their homework. It contains 5 computers (including one Athena workstation), printers, a conference table and a projector.
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Foyer
You'll find this room on the other side of our main entrance doors. A tile mosaic floor and ornately carved furniture commissioned by Mr. Andrews himself, including the bench and table, provide a worthy entrance.
Pool Room
Originally Mr. Andrew's personal study, this room now serves as a suitable dwelling for our full-sized vintage pool table.
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Gold Room
This room is called the Gold Room because of the gold-silk tapestries that used to be on the wall, or it may be because of the general gold color of the room, or the texture left from when the tapestries were removed. Some of the notable features of the room are the fresco on the ceiling (restored in 2008), the five-degree tilted mirror, and the Grandfather Clock. The mirror, which is tilted slightly upward, served the purpose of illuminating the room during the daytime. It is also believed that it might have been rude to look straight up at the ceiling or rude to show your neck, so the mirror was used so that the individual can see the fresco without looking up. The marble of the fireplace is said to be the largest piece of alabaster east of the Mississippi River.
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Music Room
This room currently houses the piano, a 1911 fully-tuned and restored Steinbach baby grand, and is used as a music room. In the original plans of the house, this was also a library, which was connected to the drawing room. On the ceiling are the crests of the affluent families in the Back Bay that existed during the time of the construction of the house. John F. Andrew married into the wealthy Thayer family and did not have the respect of all the Old Wealth blue-bloods of the Back Bay area of the time. Nathanial Thayer, John F. Andrew's father-in-law was partly in charge of the landfill in the Back Bay area and reserved the very desirable property on the corner of Commonwealth and Hereford for his daughter to construct the house. In order to gain the favor of the influential Bostonian families at the time, Andrews brought all his rich neighbors in for a housewarming party, brought them in this room, and told them to look up and behold their family crests.
In addition, there is a painting of the two Andrew's daughters, Cornelia and Elizabeth, as well as a picture of the two of them in the lower corner of the painting. The shelves that follow the walls' curvature contain many old music books and picture books of John Andrew dating back as far as 1890. Underneath the rug, there is a twelve pointed star - a chakette, Chi Phi's symbol - inlaid into the wood. This is truly remarkable, as this was there before the Chi Phi brothers bought the house in 1950. The room also contains the original embroidered leather wallpaper.
Dining Room
With seating for over sixty, a vaulted, hand-carved ceiling and close proximity to the Kitchen and Pantry make this an exceptional setting for any sort of eating-related activity.
Residents
Can also be called the Marie Antoinette room because of the balcony. The balcony outside of the room (can be reached through the window) came from the Tuileries Palace in France and was imported by Shreve, Crump, & Lowe. The palace burned down during the peasant uprisings that swept through Paris in 1874. This balcony is one out twenty of the Palace, so there is a 5% chance that it is the one she stood on during the French Revolution while uttering the phrase “Let them eat cake” when she heard about the unhappy bourgeoisie. The room was originally the wife's dressing room, next to the bathroom.
Residents
Called the Bird's Eye because of the bird's eye maple used to decorate the room, and the fact that the large windows give a bird's eye view on Commonwealth Avenue. This room used to be John Andrew's bedroom.
Residents
Called the Loft for the fact that there is a loft bed in there (built in 1974). In the early days of the house, it was most likely Mr. Andrew's dressing room. Due to the placement and space of this room, it is usually the “presidential suite” where our President lives. After the loft was built in 1974, brothers wanted to perform a “stress test” of the loft, so they deconstructed and reconstructed a Volkswagen Beetle on top of the loft and left it there for the Alpha to find.
Residents
It is called the Nook because of all of the closet and shelf space contained in the room. It is believed to have been the wife's bedroom with the Womb as the reception room. When the Andrews were entertaining guests, she would be dressed by servants in her bedroom and make a grand entrance into the reception room (Womb) by way of the large sliding doors connecting the two rooms. It was customary in the late 1800s for husband and wife to have separate bedrooms.
Residents
This was originally the living room, or entertainment room in the original design of the house, and includes a liquor cabinet with bulleted glass. It is currently called the Womb after a brother started calling it that way in the '60s because of it's pink color and oval shape. The Womb is the largest room by volume available to MIT undergrads.
Residents
This is one of the three rooms where the floor is made of cork to protect the children when they played. In addition to the cork floors, the windows were barred so that they could not fall out of the fourth floor windows. This is because the Fourth Center, the Aquarium, and the Corral were the children's rooms. This room in particular was the nanny’s bedroom. Also noteworthy is the fact that light reflecting from the apartment building across Hereford Street in the morning hours made the room hot and very bright, a natural alarm clock for the nanny to wake up and tend to the kids.
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Residents
Called the aquarium because of all of the sea scenes on the hand-painted ceramic Delft tiles (every tile is different) by the fireplace, which were imported from the Netherlands. The Aquarium has used to be the children's play room and has a soft cork floor. Supposedly, the nanny asked the children before they went to bed to point to a tile and then told a story about the tile. Other reasons for its name are the oval shape of the room, an actual mini-aquarium, a leak from the ceiling, the blue color, the many windows and mirrors, which all give the feel of being in an aquarium. Also, along the top ledge in the room, a complete railroad is set up.
Residents
This used to be the two daughters' bedroom. It is called Corral because the children were supposed to have been "herded" into the room when it was bedtime. To commemorate this fact, there is now decorative wallpaper with cowboy scenes high up on the walls.
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Residents
The Igloo was originally the guest room of the house. When our brothers bought it in 1950, the room was sealed up. When it became unnecessary to leave it open, wasting energy, the owner (John F. Andrew’s granddaughter, from whom we bought the house from) sealed up the room as well as. Inadequate heating in the room made it one of the coldest rooms in the house, hence the name Igloo. Following the opening of the room it was reinsulated and re-piped with heat. It is now one of the warmest rooms in the house. Interestingly enough, John F. Andrew realized that this room’s insulation was bad from the beginning. He would let business guests sleep in this room in the dead of winter, in which the room would just be above freezing. Having not slept well throughout the night, the guest would be easier to negotiate with the next day. In 1987, there was a leak in the ceiling of the Igloo, when repairs were being made in the drain behind the wall. The windows were left open for the plaster to dry, but the dripping water formed icicles forming icicles overnight; hence the name Igloo was justified again. The current polar blue color of the room commemorates these events.
Residents
Shrouded in myth and known only through house lore, the origin of this room's name is a memorable one. When the house was purchased from the Andrew's family in the early 1950's, a cocked bear trap was found under the floor boards. The name stuck.
Residents
This room has nothing to do the T, mass transit, or sandwiches.
Residents
So once there was a this guy named Lily... or it was painted green like a lily pad. Something like that.
Residents
"An area of space-time with a gravitational field so intense that its escape velocity is equal to or exceeds the speed of light."
- Dictionary.com
Residents
Originally called Charlotte's Web, until an inhabitant named Wilbur decided the irony was too much and had it officially changed.