The History of American College Dorms

To this day I deeply miss the ability to, when bored, wander down the hall and see whose door was open and what was going on, or to leave my own door open and get drawn into whatever interesting thing arose on the hallway. But aside from aging out of college myself, far less people are even getting access to that in the first place. The entire "dorm" model is dying at colleges, as the residential buildings, though still colloquially called dorms, are really just apartment buildings, except more expensive and they kick you out for a while every couple months.

My college had conventional dorms, and then they also bought and renovated a bunch of the houses in the surrounding neighborhood, capable of housing maybe 6 or 8 students each. I lived in one of those houses.

Today, one of my kids is presently in a college dorm.

One thing was notable about the dorms, namely: The college is a great landlord. Dorms tend to be reasonably secure, safe, and sanitary. Repairs are made promptly and correctly. If something goes dreadfully wrong with a dorm room, you can be in another room within a few hours. Because the dorms are designed for college life, the distraction of dealing with your living arrangements is kept to a bare minimum.

My dorm was an old motel that the school was leasing. You could park right outside your door, or go up the stairs if you were on the second floor. Since we were a couple of blocks away from the main campus, we had our own dining room. Which had better food than the main dining halls because it was less institutional - the workers there knew us and our preferences. It was one of the best-kept secrets of the university.

>"State universities located in towns of any size frequently looked upon dormitories as an extravagance and students entirely capable of renting lodging elsewhere. The first dormitory at Rutgers was only built in 1890."

Rutgers was not the state university until 1945.

Spoiler: the history isn't very surprising.