WHEN WE WERE NORMAL
A Historical Augmented Reality Walking Tour
Where Do We Put the Men?
LOCATION: GROUND FLOOR NEAR REC ROOM
Palmer Hall, designed by renowned Fitchburg architect H.M. Francis, was originally a women’s dormitory. However, by the 1920s the male students began clamouring for their own on-campus housing. The Stick published their general frustrationsin 1927:
“Fitchburg State Normal School may be fortunate in having so many men in it’s student body, but it certainly is not fortunate in the living accomodations which it offers them [...] since there is no men’s dormitory, these men find rooms in neighboring houses and either eat in the normal school dining room or downtown [....] The need of a dormitory for the men is great. Perhaps some morning the Fitchburg Normal School may awaken to find another red brick building on its campus”.
In fact, by 1932, 47 percent of the student body was male and still, they had no housing. While slightly more than half of the male students were in the Practical Arts program, then an all men’s program, the others were in the Junior High School section and Elementary section.
Men did not get campus housing until the early 1930s when the depression resulted in lower enrollments amongst female students. With the space left behind, male students of the Normal School could take up rooms in Palmer. They even had a barber in the building, Charles “Chick” Andrews.
The Palmer men wasted no time developing their own social calendar, starting with ping-pong, checkers, bridge, horseshoes, and cribbage tournaments and intramural basketball teams. They also began an annual Christmas dinner and dance and invited the Miller women to attend.
Soon the Practical Arts students would have company. During the 1940s, the college worked with the US government to help train and educate future naval officers through a cadet program. Palmer Hall was one of the residences made available to the cadets alongside a set of barracks on Highland Street next to campus.
By the post-war period, men had little space in Palmer Hall and the women were just as (and possibly more) crowded in Miller Hall. To accommodate the growing number of students at Fitchburg, construction on Herlihy began in 1956. Palmer reverted to a women’s dormitory in 1958 when the men moved to Herlihy. The men now had permanent housing on campus.