Where Do We Put the Men?
Location: Ground floor near rec room​
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Palmer Hall, designed by renowned Fitchburg architect HM 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 in 1927 the general frustrations:
“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 enrollment numbers of 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.
Palmer Hall, designed by renowned Fitchburg architect HM 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 in 1927 the general frustrations:
“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 enrollment numbers of 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.
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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. Regardless of the building, the men now had permanent housing on campus.
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