The Theta House, 338 South Milledge Avenue, was built in 1856-57 by A.P. Dearing, son of wealthy Athens manufacturer William Dearing. The architecture provides an example of “full Greek Revival temple form.” The house, massive in scale even in its day, showed the Antebellum South ideal with its two stories crafted out of red bricks which were made on site and its white peristyle of twelve columns in giant Greek Doric
order on three sides. The outer walls are 16 inches thick, resting on a brick foundation. The twelve Doric columns are solid brick covered with fluted plaster.
The house remained in the Dearing family until the Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority who purchased it for $5,800 saved it from ruin in 1938. Little paint and plaster remained on the columns and the shutters and doors dangled by their hinges.
Worthy of note are the immense heart pine floorboards and fruitwood dining room doors. Of classic proportions each floor has two rooms twenty feet square on either side of a wide central hallway. The furnishings include rare pieces, among those being a secretary belonging to General T.R.R. Cobb, the author of the Confederate Constitution.
The Dearing Homestead is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Historic American Building Survey and has long been touted as the finest home of its ilk in the state.
Cal Berkeley was designed by Theta Julia Morgan. It's stunning.
Omicron/University of Southern California is lovely, lovely, lovely.
__________________ "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." Bertrand Russell, The Triumph of Stupidity
I was very charmed by Butler's sorority houses, particularly Theta, when I was there. They are grand without being so imposing that they aren't homelike.
If you are looking for the grand-mansion genre of house, though, it's hard to beat Mizzou. They have some great pics on their site: http://www.mizzoutheta.com/house-tour
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