Memories of McCormick Hall

After not having been to Boston in decades, here we are going twice within three months. Dan and Carrie's gift to us last Christmas was time shared with us.  They proposed scheduling a trip to New England during the peak in fall foliage and having us show them the sites at MIT and around our old stomping grounds near Boston. As it turns out, the 50th anniversary celebration of McCormick Hall, my dorm while at MIT, was being held the first weekend in October so we scheduled the trip to include that.

About 200 women attended the celebration.

Dan and his wife Carrie flew out to the east coast half a week ahead of Frank and me and did some hiking and touring in the Vermont and New Hampshire area north of Boston, catching the foliage at its peak for that location. They picked us up at Boston's Logan Airport Friday night, and we took the "T" back to our town home condominium in Boston. I was bemused that the transit tickets are called Charlie Passes. The name is in honor of the Kingston Trio's 1959 song hit, titled Charlie on the M.T.A., that objected to the rise in fares for the subway system. Frank, Dan, Carrie and I each paid $18.00 for a 7 day pass. Note that Charlie's fare was a dime and he could not afford the additional nickel to get off.

Lyrics to Charlie on the M.T.A.

Our lodging was not far from the Harvard Bridge crossing over the Charles River. This sparked the story of how the unit of measure of the bridge is Smoots. A smoot is the height of a fairly short fraternity brother who was reportedly tied to a plank while inebriated and rotated head to toe, toe to head to pace off the bridge distance. The length of the Harvard Bridge is 364.4 smoots with an uncertainty in measurement of ± one ear. Another Harvard Bridge story is the origin of its name.  Anecdotally there was an essay contest among the Boston area colleges. The winner of the contest was given the honor of naming the bridge.  Reportedly MIT won and chose to name it the Harvard Bridge because MIT engineers had calculated it to be structurally unsound. The bridge was indeed declared unsound in 1909 and major renovations to the superstructure were made in the 1980's. The story is fun to repeat and displays MIT loyalty even if it does stretch the truth just a bit.

After dropping off our luggage, we relaxed at a late dinner in a restaurant called Stephi's on Tremont (Street), a short walk from our lodging. We had a great meal with a bit of wine and a tad of memorable conversation seated at a window with a pleasant view of the street but snug from the misty night air.

Stephi's on Tremont is the restaurant where we dined
with Dan and Carrie on our first night of arrival to Boston.

The next morning, Saturday, Frank and I went to McCormick for a brunch where we met my former suite mates Brenda, Norma, Sue and her husband John.  Dan and Carrie joined us later for the McCormick Hall tour and a round of MIT tourism. McCormick Hall was built from an endowment from Katherine Dexter McCormick with the stipulation that it was to house only female students. The intent was to give women at MIT a comfortable, welcoming, haven-like environment as a home base from which they would best be supported in pursuing a science career among a largely male dominated campus. Boys in the bathrooms, or rather absence thereof, was debated often, was a big deal, and apparently still is a big deal judging by this posted sign. 

The fine print of footnote above defines guys as brother, father, just a friend (really), delivery man, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, male person, sire, fellow, chap, gentlemen, gent, don, Mister, Monsieur, signior, drake, gander, peacock, stag, hart, steer. 

McCormick Hall was built in two stages with two towers as are caricatured by the anniversary logo. The west tower is laid out in the long hallway fashion typical of hotels and hospitals and many dormitories. On our tour we were able to view Room 203 on the second floor of the west tower where I stayed for my freshman year. That first year my friend Sue was housed in the East Tower.  We would cart our food, pots and pans, and dishes across the lobby joining the two towers each night to cook and eat our dinner with each other.

Me outside my freshman home,  Room 203.

The next three college years I spent in the East Tower in a Room 527, one of eight rooms in a suite on the fifth floor that shares a communal bathroom (no guys permitted) and a large kitchen lounge area with a view of the Charles River. One day while I was inside studying away, my suite mates taped over the door with newspapers. They tried to work silently but after a while I heard rustling and giggling and opened my door inward only to be  confronted with an entire wall of newspaper print. I punched my way out. I know we took a picture of just my head poking out but it was the pre-digital camera age so only a hard copy and maybe a negative exist somewhere. Silly activities such as this were the stress relievers during those school days.

Me outside my sophomore, junior, and senior home, Room 527, 5th River East.

It was such a pleasure to visit the old haunts of my college dorm and share them and the associated stories of those days with college suite mates, Sue, Brenda, and Norma and my son and daughter-in-law.  Husbands Frank and John went along for the stroll down memory lane also. Here is the view from the penthouse with the Boston skyline in the background. We used to have parties in the penthouse. 

Frank, me, Carrie and Dan from the penthouse of the McCormick Hall East Tower.

One Halloween bash, John and Sue dressed up as Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy. We had "rocket fuel punch" courtesy of some dry ice from one of the labs. Brenda, Margaret, and I dressed up as Snap, Crackle, and Pop, the Rice Krispies elves and sang the jingle as well. I think I was Crackle, that Brenda was Snap, and that Margaret was Pop. Anybody want to correct my memory?

Do any of you remember those smiling little elves singing this peppy jingle
extolling the praises of the popular breakfast cereal Rice Krispies?

After the McCormick Hall tour we walked parts of the MIT campus. We passed the Chapel. I described it in my post for August 25, 2013. This time my memory of the location drifted to less spiritual thoughts. I relayed to Dan and Carrie that outside this chapel was where I saw my first streaker cutting across the green outside the student center.  

Frank and me at one entrance to the inter-denominational MIT Chapel

Streaking was a popular prank in the early 1970's. Naive as I was, this was my first time viewing the naked male anatomy. I also experience a male streaker sprinting through one of the lecture halls during one of my core classes. He entered from the double doors at the far right, cut across in front of the first row of seats, and exited at the far left. The professor glanced up only briefly and continued writing his notes on the blackboard. I do not remember what core class, what professor, and what lecture hall. I was somewhat distracted at the time, you see, and did not form that memory. Another not-so-godly reminiscence was the evening when my suite mates and I estimated the volume of water in the moat surrounding the chapel. We then calculated the number of boxes of Jello that would be required to immobilize the ripples of the water in the moat. I tell you – more world class calculations are performed at this esteemed institute than you can ever imagine!

Pushing onward, we walked to tour the main building. Carrie took a picture of us old folk ready to cross the street at 77 Massachusetts Avenue, one of the most heavy trafficked entrances to MIT's main building.

Brenda, me, Frank, Sue, John about to cross "Mass Ave"

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The Great Dome of the MIT main building houses the engineering library.  The stacks seem to go on forever.  They do, actually, if you do not mark where you start, since they run in a continuous circle within the circumference of the dome. Carrie wanted to lay hands on the hard copy of my master's thesis, but that was so long ago the hard copy is not there. It was scanned to microfiche. You can google it. Really. All 174 pages of it. I looked at it online and it was as if someone other than me had authored it, hand drawn those figures, and submitted it way back in May of 1976.

Me outside the Engineering Library where my thesis isn't.

Excerpt from my Master's thesis – I can't believe I wrote the WHOLE thing!

We posed for one last picture in the Great Court. That domed roof in the background is where we just were, in the engineering library. We also went to the Earth Sciences Building on another part of campus to see if a mural Brenda had helped paint was still there. Sadly it was not. It had been painted over. I guess that the biggest traces of our sojourn in MIT remain in our memories and in the memories of our friends.

Brenda, Sue, me, Frank, John in the Great Court.

We parted company with Dan and Carrie at this point and continued on to the Symposium and Dinner portion of the McCormick Hall Anniversary Celebration. Some symposium topics were very interesting and some not so much. Speeches at the dinner were... well let me just say they had a captive audience. The post-dinner entertainment of student dance performances were pretty awesome though and well worth the wait.

We all took home with us our stress beaver, a souvenir handed out as part of the McCormick Hall Anniversary celebration. Long after we were finished hugging our friends good bye and good night, we will still have this little fellow to squeeze.

The beaver is the engineer of the animal world
and the MIT engineer is the animal of the engineering world.