Two Months ago I posed the question of the room names in the original house of the Pomeroy Chapter House at 58 Pinewoods. I received fewer responses than I expected. Surprisingly the room names have changed little since my first days in 1970.
The original house second floor with each of the old floor plan rooms numbered from 1 through 8, from the front room on the right side, counterclockwise. Room 9 was in the basement under the living room and room 10 was under the dining room (during 1970).
If you have any pictures or additional stories to share, please send them my way
This is a long message:
Bob Barney Shortle ‘74
Room Names and dates
- Small Bore Range– Bill Pomeroy ‘66 named this room in the 1960’s after relocating a plastic name plate from a campus ROTC room. Prior name unknown
- Land of the Giants– 1970 named by Paul Cosgrave ‘72. His roommates, Chris Serocke ’73 and Wayne “Goose” Landers ’73 averaged 6 foot 3; named after a 1960’s television show. prior Grotto – date and meaning unknown; Rod Blumenau ’65 “#2 was “The Grotto”, where I lived with Lou Chiappetta and Bruce Allen in ’62-’63.”
- Bride’s Room– date and meaning unknown;
- Consul’s Corner– date unknown; this room had a private bath. The bath was once connected to the Bride’s room but was blocked in 1970. The meaning is straightforward.
- Closet– meaning is obvious but the date is unknown
- No Sex Central– date sometime in the 1980’s but origin unknown (or no one has owned up to the meaning); during the 1970’s it was the Rogue’s Den for quite the opposite meaning – named by Jim Munger ’69 denoting his approach to dating (see below); prior name unknown.
- Executive Suite– named by Bob Jones ’73 in 1971; prior was the ticket office because of size; during the 2000 remodeling, the closets between the Executive Suite and the Nursery were rearranged to make the Executive Suite larger.
- Nursery – date and meaning unknown;
- Basement – Dungeon – date and source unknown;
- Basement – Cave – date and source unknown; From Art Nichols ‘73: It was called “The Cave” for pretty obvious reasons: it was in the basement with no windows and the door was only about 4 feet tall, so everyone had to duck way down to enter.”
I never heard when the Basement rooms were vacated to comply with Fire Regulations, as there way only one egress.
Also the toilet room between the SBR and LOG was known during my time as the Red Head because of the color of the paint and not for the amount of time spent by the red-headed Chris Serocke.
Bob Jones ’73 – Room 7: “Tom Regan and I moved in in Fall 1970. Since it was the smallest room in the house, we decided to give it a little “status” by calling it the Executive Suite. Since my father and Tom’s worked for AT&T, we got a discount on a phone and were the only room in the house at the time with a private phone (Consul had the chapter phone and there was a pay phone downstairs, usually manned by pledges). The room was later expanded by taking some of the Nursery space.”
Rod Blumenau ’65: “No idea where the name Grotto came from, although it predated 1962-63 occupants Brothers Chiappetta, Allen & Blumenau, shown here burning the midnight oil in their 1962 Christmas card…’ http://www.sigmachi-rpi.org/viewArticle.php?file=news/articles/Christmas_Card_from_the_Grotto_1962.txt
From The Class of 97′ made wooden plaques with the names of each of the rooms in the old house.” I arrived a couple days early for the 2006 Work Party, and detected that after the upstairs remodeling, the room names for the SBR and the LOG had been switched.
Jerry Snider ’56 shared this comment: “In my years, ’52 to ’58,The third floor attic of the old house was a dormitory sleeping area for everyone except the two basement rooms. There was a small iron platform with a straight iron ladder to the ground outside the windows facing the rear yard. This was our fire escape.”
After the Love addition was built in 1972, the need for the “third deck” diminished and was rarely use for sleeping. http://www.sigmachi-rpi.org/photos/set.php?id=72157630848163578&title=Pomeroy+House+Renovation
From Jon Sullivan: “For the New House, the two basement rooms next to the chapter meeting/party room were referred to as The Corner of Fun when I was there in the early 00s. Other than that only two rooms over there had names that I’m aware of – one was the “Stabin’ Cabin'” and one was The Lounge or maybe The Living Room, because everyone hung out there.”
Jim Munger Banghart ’69:
“Al Jorgensen (alias Jorge) and i moved into that room our junior year (fall of ’67) and we had this dating philosophy called the rogue’s philosophy that we advocated. We called ourselves rogues. The room became known by Rogue’s Den. Because we stayed there two years and I guess were pretty vocal on the Rogue theme I guess the name became established but I am a bit surprised that it has lasted this long.”
“Our Rogue philosophy was quite simple. Most people meet a date and if they like them they date exclusively until they either break up or get married and they do so because it is easy. The Rogue philosophy was to date as many different people as you could, not to think the first person you had a serious mutual liking for should be your life mate. I dated many girls but didn’t commit to any. A good example is that I never took the same girl to 2 big weekends in my 5 years there, 20 weekends, 20 different girls. I thought if I really liked a girl I could have a good time with her any slow weekend but if I wanted to get to know a new girl I, and probably she too, could have a good time on a big weekend even if we didn’t hit it off all that well. I felt if the right girl came along it would be overwelming and I should resist that because I wanted someone even more overwhelmingly. I wasn’t expecting to be committed as an undergraduate and wasn’t pinned until grad school when Annie came along and I was overwhelmed. In retrospect it worked for me because I met girls before that I could have got serious with, at least two of which I dated for 3 years.”
Sigma Chi Fraternity 