Last (Small) House Standing

If you’ve read your copy of the Fall 2009 Heritage magazine then you’ve been more or less brought up to speed on the status of the Campus Master Plan and the changes that will come to the SHSU horizon in the next decade or so. In an interview about the master plan, SHSU President James Gaertner notes some of the items on the planned demolition schedule include Allen, Randel, Spivey, and Vick Houses.

Those are but four examples of the small, brick residential units that have dotted the campus landscape over the years. There were originally 25 of these “small houses” (the oldest date back to 1956) and they’ve been home to underclassmen, fraternities, sororities, and a menagerie of other various campus offices (such as Residence Life). But in recent years they’ve slowly been removed to make way for bigger and better buildings. None of them are architectural treasures that were meant to stand a century or two or the classiest of digs to call your home, but they have served the campus – and their students – well over the last 50 years.

So that got us thinking: because they sit on prime campus real estate, and it's little surprise that they're regularly listed as candidates for demolition, which will be the last small house standing on the SHSU campus? Make your guess today!

This survey ended July 15, 2016.

Keep the following in mind: your “vote” in no way sways campus officials one way or the other on what to do. This is but all for fun (or what we’re passing off as fun). Master Plans are notoriously tricky - they’re not always carried out right away, nor does the university always end up looking like the approved plan: construction can be slow, projects can shift priorities, and the university can change their mind. Austin Hall was once considered, according to one plan in the early Twentieth Century, for demolition, so too may these small houses stick around for a while.