Bexley Hall (W13)
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". 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.
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.
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." For a similar, but far more amusing story of the FBI at Bexley, see this story about the FBI searching for drugs at Bexley in the '70s.
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."
The May 1970 Grateful Dead concerts at MIT were sponsored by Bexley's housemaster.
Read more about this topic: List Of Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Undergraduate Dormitories
Famous quotes containing the word hall:
“Having children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too—unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child’s trouble.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)