Construction of The Present Building: The "L"
In 1920 Encina Commons was opened, with separate dining rooms for the other Clubs. El Capitan and El Cuadro were organized in 1921 and together with Los Arcos (then still known as Entre Nous) moved to the Commons. El Tigre was organized in 1922, and shared a Commons room with El Capitan.
Until World War II there were three Clubs in the Little Quad and four in Encina Commons. After the War, veterans returned to find the "Little Quad" had been condemned and demolished. Encina Commons was too crowded with freshmen to provide individual dining rooms for each Club, so all seven Clubs were jammed into one large dining room.
Faced with conditions they considered intolerable, the Clubs began a concentrated effort to build their own facilities. A fund drive was launched, proved successful, and in 1951 the present Club building was dedicated on Big Game day.
From the new location, referred to as "The L" due to its shape, the Eating Clubs took on a new dimension, becoming an integral part of the life of adjacent Toyon Hall. Toyon's men were all 'Club members, and the social and intellectual life of the dorm was next door in the dining rooms and lounges of the 'Clubs. The Eating Clubs started many internal traditions, and some that were became enduring legacies for Stanford as a whole. For instance, it was an El Toro member (and ASSU president) who began the Axe tradition. The Eating Clubs by this point were seen as an alternative to the fraternity system. They were an all-male organization that explained their philosophy as follows:
Our uniqueness allows us to do our own thinking and planning. We have no one to imitate, no national affiliation to determine our traditions and policies. Our independence, even from University control, gives our members the chance they need and deserve to do with their talents as they wish. .
Read more about this topic: Stanford Eating Clubs
Famous quotes containing the words construction of the, the l, construction of, construction and/or present:
“When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“To be worst,
The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear.
The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then,
Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!
The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
Owes nothing to thy blasts.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“No real “vital” character in fiction is altogether a conscious construction of the author. On the contrary, it may be a sort of parasitic growth upon the author’s personality, developing by internal necessity as much as by external addition.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)