Baker House[edit]

Detail of Baker House facade which faces the Charles River.

Baker House,[7] located at 362 Memorial Drive, is a co-ed dormitory at MIT designed by the
Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in 1947—1948 and built in 1949. Its distinctive design has an
undulating shape which allows most rooms a view of the Charles River, and gives many of
the rooms a wedge-shaped layout. The dining hall features a "moon garden" roof that is also
very distinctive. Aalto also designed furniture for the rooms. Baker House was renovated for
its fiftieth anniversary, modernizing the plumbing, telecommunications, and electrical
systems and removing some of the interior changes made over the years that were not in
Aalto's original design.

The dorm was named after Everett Moore Baker, an MIT Dean of Students, who died in a
plane crash in India in 1949.[8][9] The dormitory houses 318 undergraduates in single, double,
triple and quadruple rooms. Baker's dining halls are open to all MIT students every day of the
week.

Dropping a piano from the roof was started by former Baker resident Charles Bruno ’74 in
1972 and was resumed as an annual tradition in 2005. The piano is dropped on drop day- the
last day MIT students can drop a class with no penalty.[10]

Notable Baker House alumni include Kenneth Olsen (Electrical Engineering, 1950), co-
founder of Digital Equipment Corporation; Amar Bose (Electrical Engineering, 1951),
founder of the Bose Corporation and inventor of numerous audio technologies; Alan Guth
(Physics, 1968), astrophysicist and professor of physics at MIT; Timothy Carney (1966),
former U.S. Ambassador to Sudan and Haiti; Gerald Sussman (Mathematics, 1968), professor
of computer science at MIT; Geoffrey A. Landis (physics, Electrical Engineering, 1980),
NASA scientist and science fiction writer; Cady Coleman (1983), NASA Astronaut; Wesley
Bush (1983), Chairman and CEO, Northrop Grumman; Warren Madden (1985), Weather
Channel meterorologist; Jonathan Gruber, healthcare economist and political advisor
(Economics, 1987); Charles Korsmo (Physics, 2000), actor in movies such as Hook and Can't
Hardly Wait; and Ed Miller, noted poker authority.

In the summer of 2009, Baker House alumni held a reunion to celebrate Baker's 60th
Anniversary which received a Great Dome award from the MIT Association of Alumni and
Alumnae.[citation needed]
Bexley Hall[edit]

Bexley courtyard during the Blizzard of '78

Bexley Hall, located at 46-52 Massachusetts Avenue, is an early twentieth century brick
building, consisting of four four-story walkups surrounding a central courtyard. It is almost
directly across the street from MIT's Building 7 — old MIT official directories described it as
being "just a stoned throw from the Institute's front door".[11] As former apartments which
were renovated in the 1970s, Bexley suites have full kitchens and bathrooms. The soundproof
walls of Bexley can be painted by students and are plastered with murals and graffiti, some of
which date back to the 1960s.

Long known for its alternative culture, Bexley was among the first MIT dormitories to
officially become coed, and it now houses 120 undergrads. It was also one of the first MIT
dorms to be co-species, as residents used to let their cats roam free around the building
decades before MIT officially adopted a cat-friendly policy in 2008.

Well known alumni of Bexley Hall include Dan Bricklin, co-inventor of the computerized
spreadsheet, and Jeff Sagarin, a sports computerized ratings guru who first became known
through his ranking and odds (betting) lines in USA Today, but who later was hired by the
NCAA to help with computerizing the basketball tournament selection process. Also among
best-recognized former Bexley residents were Institute Professor Jerome Lettvin and his wife
Maggie who were Bexley "houseparents" in the 1970s and early 1980s. More recently, Drew
Houston the founder and CEO of the MIT start-up Dropbox lived in Bexley.[citation needed]

The dorm has a tightly knit community where people share their suites' halls with the rest of
the Bexley residents to form a network of rooms and living spaces. The main Lounges (all,
except for the "lounge" at the front desk, created in the 1990s) include the "FU$K" lounge
located on the third floor on the north side of the building next to the 305 suite. There is also
the Coke lounge located on the south side on the fourth floor. In addition to its alternative
culture and anti-rush ideas Bexley is also notorious for alleged LSD manufacturing in the
infamous BEXMENT in the 70's.[12]

Sometime in the early '70s, following leads in the phone hacking case of Cap'n Crunch, the
FBI paid a visit to Bexley. Twenty to thirty Bexleyites filled a living room on the first floor
of 46 Mass. Ave. and were "interviewed" by two FBI agents. "We shared popcorn, and asked
them more questions than they asked us; the spirit was boisterous."[citation needed]

A graffito on the inside of a closet door at 50 Mass. Ave. said, simply, "2.361". To an MIT
student the decimal notation could only identify a course number—in this case, for a
Mechanical Engineering course (Course 2). "A perusal of the current (1970s) catalog showed
no such course. At the time, I worked in the stacks at MIT's library. They had old course
catalogs, so I looked in one from the '60s, and, sure enough, there it was: 2.361 Friction and
Lubrication."[13]

The May 1970 Grateful Dead concerts at MIT[14] were sponsored by Bexley's housemaster.

On May 7, 2013, MIT announced that Bexley Hall would be closed for up to three years, due
to significant water damage inside the building's exterior walls that rendered the dormitory
unsafe to live in.[15] Bexley residents and others expressed considerable concern about the
sudden disruption of student housing plans, and possible loss of the unique student culture
that had evolved over the years.[16][17][18]

On October 17, 2013, MIT's Department of Facilities recommended that Bexley be

demolished. It was considered too expensive to repair and bring up to modern code.[19]

Burton-Conner House[edit]

The three "Burton" wings of Burton-Conner House, viewed from Memorial Drive

Burton-Conner House,[20] (shortened to Burton-Conner or BC), is located at 410 Memorial

Drive, on the north bank of the Charles River. At maximum uncrowded capacity, Burton-
Conner officially holds 344 students. The building is five stories high, plus a ground floor.

Burton-Conner is a combination of two major sections of the former "Riverside" hotel and
apartment building, which MIT acquired and reopened as a dormitory in 1950. "Burton
House" consists of the 3 western-most wings, while "Conner Hall" comprises the remaining 2
wings of the extended E-shaped structure. The two sections of the building are physically
separated by a firewall above the ground floor; to pass from Conner 4 to Burton 4, a resident
must first descend to the ground floor. In the 1960s, a dining hall was added at the rear of
Burton-Conner, on the side away from the river. Some years later, the dining hall was shut
down, and the space was renamed the Porter Room, a shared meeting and student event
space. The entire building underwent a complete restructuring during 1970-1971, when the
internal layout was changed from a floor orientation (with floor-wide bathrooms and gang
showers) to a suite orientation (introducing kitchens, suite lounges, and semi-private
bathrooms).

In the dorm, nine floors (2 through 5 on the Conner side and 1 through 5 on the Burton side)
are used for student housing. On Conner 1 are the housemaster's apartment, a library with
Athena-network computers, a study area, and the Residential Life Associate's apartment. On
the ground floor, notable features include an electronics lab and darkroom (unused for over
10 years), music rooms, a game room, weight and exercise rooms, and a lounge with a snack
bar.

Most residents name their floor by their section name followed by a cardinal number
denoting their floor, such as "Burton 2"; however, Burton Third is the only floor that is often
named by an ordinal number. Burton 2 has a large Jewish population because of the presence
of a Kosher kitchen in its center suite. A group of Hillel students gather on Burton 2 after
Shabbat (Jewish Sabbath) services and sit around a table to sing lively z'mirot (Jewish songs)
in an event they know as "Tisch" every Friday evening.

In January 2011, current and former residents celebrated the 60th anniversary of Burton-
Conner with a reunion gathering in the Porter Room. A special commemorative history[21] was
compiled for the occasion, along with enhancement of an ongoing website for residents and
alumni.[22]

East Campus Alumni Memorial Housing (Buildings 62

and 64)[edit]

Aerial view of the two parallels of East Campus Alumni Memorial Housing (northerly ends
are at left of photo).

Variously known as East Campus, Fred the Dorm, and East Campus Alumni Memorial
Houses,[23] East Campus is MIT's second oldest dormitory after Senior House. Located at 3
Ames Street, it is an undergraduate dorm formed from six "houses", each named after an
alumnus of MIT:

 Goodale (Charles W. Goodale, '75)

 Bemis (Albert Farwell Bemis, '93, member of the MIT Corporation from 1914 to
1936)
 Walcott (William W. Walcott, '01)
 Munroe (James P. Munroe, '82, Secretary of the MIT Corporation from 1907 to 1929)
 Hayden (Charles Hayden, '90, member of the MIT Corporation from 1907 to 1929)
 Wood (Kenneth F. Wood, '94)

East Campus is arranged in two long north-south buildings, the east parallel (one house built
in 1924, extended to full parallel in 1928) and the west parallel (built in 1931). Each is
divided into three houses, which are connected by floor. There are 5 floors, plus a basement,
in each parallel. The houses are architectural entities, but the social organization is by floor:
students can more easily walk to other rooms on the floor than go up or down stairs to
another floor. Students typically think of themselves as residents of Fourth East (fourth floor,
east parallel) rather than as residents of Bemis House. Floors with distinctive cultures often
have additional names such as "Beast" (Second East), "Tetazoo" (Third East), "Slugfest"
(Fourth East), "Florey" (Fifth East), "Stickman" (First West), "Putz" (Second West), "Floor
Pi" (Third West), or "41st West" (Fourth West).

The dorm celebrated its 90th anniversary in 2014. Due to the dorm's age, sturdiness, and
tradition, the 354 undergrads living there are allowed to paint and alter rooms and floor
common spaces, up to the limits of what the Cambridge fire code will allow. Students
frequently use technology to customize their rooms, building projects such as an Emergency
Pizza Button to have Domino's deliver a cheese pizza,[24] a disco dance floor,[25] and an
automatic door-unlocking system.[26]

Notable alumni of East Campus include NASA astronaut Michael Fincke, Ahmed Chalabi of
the Iraqi National Congress and George Smoot, co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in

Physics.