List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Graduate Dormitories - Ashdown House (NW35)

Ashdown House (NW35)

Ashdown House (235 Albany Street) is a graduate dormitory for 483 single students, and is named for Avery Allen Ashdown, the first housemaster. The dorm is currently located in a building constructed in 2008 after having moved occupants and the name from an older building (W1) located at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Memorial Drive. (New) Ashdown is the location of the popular Thirsty Ear Pub, as well as Ashdown Dining.

In 2006, MIT announced plans to relocate Ashdown House by building another new graduate dormitory (Building NW35) southeast of the then-new Sidney-Pacific grad dormitory. The newer dorm, which carries over the name "Ashdown House," was opened in August 2008. The new Ashdown was designed with the first graduate student dining hall and dining plan at MIT; the previous Ashdown House, originally named Graduate House, had a la carte dining service through the early 1970s.

As of June 2011, the previous Ashdown House building became a new undergraduate dormitory named Maseeh Hall, after renovations involving the removal of kitchens and the addition of a mandatory-participation dining hall, enabling MIT to increase its undergraduate capacity. In the meantime, the undergraduate enrollment was increased slightly before the renovations were completed; part of the new Ashdown House graduate dormitory was used to house up to 50 undergraduates as well as their housemasters temporarily, to establish a dorm government and community before renovations of the old building were finished. Opening of Maseeh Hall occurred in September 2011.

Notable former Ashdown residents include Murray Gell-Mann who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969 and Elias James Corey who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1990.