PKT25: Touring the House, Part 4: Basement Public Areas
Now that we've explored all of the first floor, it's time to head down the hallway, past The Bakery, around the corner by the half bathroom and down the stairs to the basement. The basement at the Phi Kappa Theta house had a "public" area that was open during parties and a "private" area that contained assorted bedrooms plus the the mechanical areas of the house. I'll cover the public areas in this post and the privates ones later.
First, though, was the bar. Can't have a fraternity house without a bar, right? When you came down the stairs you'd first encounter our pop machine, which was filled by the Assistant Treasurer of the house. Immediately to the left was the bar, which was actually rather nice. You flipped up the counter to slip behind it, where there was enough room for 3 large trash cans full of ice. In later years in the house we even set up a commercial ice machine under the bar, which meant we didn't have to acquire ice from the nearby hotel under dubious circumstances. The bar was mostly used during parties. Alcohol was only allowed under severely limited circumstances at fraternity parties, only in the form of beer, and that only from cans and bottles, so the shelves behind the bar mostly just had decorations. Any brother who turned 21 and was assigned bartending duties during a party quickly acquired a certain skill at pouring two beers into two solo cups at the same time, which sped things up significantly. Given the lack of quality of the beer we were serving, this didn't cause it any significant downside.
As you faced the bar, to the left was the bedroom called The Catacombs, where my big brother Phil lived with a rotating cast of roommates for most of his tenure in the house. After he graduated in 1999, we turned this room into a much nicer television room with stadium seating via plywood risers. It was actually quite comfortable, although it had been disassembled when I was last there. The TV itself was quite large in an era when flatscreens weren't a thing yet. The TV rack had wheels so we could roll the whole assembly behind a locked door in the private area during parties. True story - when I was the Summer House Manager in 2000 we were in the process of converting the room to the raised seating, and someone (I forget who) asked to film a scene in a low budget horror film in that room. We let them film a few scenes (I seem to recall cultists were involved), but I don't think anything ever came of it.
If you turned right from the bar, you saw a large living room / den area. This was the original television room when I joined the house, and as such had an assortment of sofas and other furniture. When we turned the Catacombs into television room, we moved the pool table into the old television room. The old pool room was in the private area of the house and was not actually large enough to give adequate clearance around the pool table, so this facilitated a significant improvement in the quality of the billiards being played by fraternity members. We actually the pool table by the simple of expedient of paying a company to re-slate the table, so they took it out of the house, fixed it up, and put it back together in the new location. They also redid the felt and the pockets. It about broke my heart when I went back for the 75th reunion in 2016 and learned that the table was nowhere to be found.
The bar area and television room / pool room (and later the Catacombs when it became the television room) were open during parties. You could grab a beer or non-alcoholic beverage and actually have a conversation without being deafened by the stereo system, which as I've mentioned was very good and very, very loud. During non-party times, the television room was a popular hangout, particularly once we got the stadium seating up. If nothing was good on cable, we often ended up watching people play video games, thereby anticipating Twitch.
While there were quite a few windows they were all at the bottom of assorted window wells to the front or driveway side of the house. It was pretty dark down there at the best of times. Unlike the hardwood featured on the other floors of the house, this part of the basement had tile floors. The tile was fortunate as in the last few years of the house we had some sewer line problems which eventually led to us digging up the line from the street to the sewer and replacing it. As you may have surmised, we had to map the basement floors on short notice on several occasions.
If you stood with your back to the bar during a party, you would see a locked door next to the pop machine. That part of the basement was off-limits to partygoers, and we'll go there in our next post.
First, though, was the bar. Can't have a fraternity house without a bar, right? When you came down the stairs you'd first encounter our pop machine, which was filled by the Assistant Treasurer of the house. Immediately to the left was the bar, which was actually rather nice. You flipped up the counter to slip behind it, where there was enough room for 3 large trash cans full of ice. In later years in the house we even set up a commercial ice machine under the bar, which meant we didn't have to acquire ice from the nearby hotel under dubious circumstances. The bar was mostly used during parties. Alcohol was only allowed under severely limited circumstances at fraternity parties, only in the form of beer, and that only from cans and bottles, so the shelves behind the bar mostly just had decorations. Any brother who turned 21 and was assigned bartending duties during a party quickly acquired a certain skill at pouring two beers into two solo cups at the same time, which sped things up significantly. Given the lack of quality of the beer we were serving, this didn't cause it any significant downside.
As you faced the bar, to the left was the bedroom called The Catacombs, where my big brother Phil lived with a rotating cast of roommates for most of his tenure in the house. After he graduated in 1999, we turned this room into a much nicer television room with stadium seating via plywood risers. It was actually quite comfortable, although it had been disassembled when I was last there. The TV itself was quite large in an era when flatscreens weren't a thing yet. The TV rack had wheels so we could roll the whole assembly behind a locked door in the private area during parties. True story - when I was the Summer House Manager in 2000 we were in the process of converting the room to the raised seating, and someone (I forget who) asked to film a scene in a low budget horror film in that room. We let them film a few scenes (I seem to recall cultists were involved), but I don't think anything ever came of it.
If you turned right from the bar, you saw a large living room / den area. This was the original television room when I joined the house, and as such had an assortment of sofas and other furniture. When we turned the Catacombs into television room, we moved the pool table into the old television room. The old pool room was in the private area of the house and was not actually large enough to give adequate clearance around the pool table, so this facilitated a significant improvement in the quality of the billiards being played by fraternity members. We actually the pool table by the simple of expedient of paying a company to re-slate the table, so they took it out of the house, fixed it up, and put it back together in the new location. They also redid the felt and the pockets. It about broke my heart when I went back for the 75th reunion in 2016 and learned that the table was nowhere to be found.
The bar area and television room / pool room (and later the Catacombs when it became the television room) were open during parties. You could grab a beer or non-alcoholic beverage and actually have a conversation without being deafened by the stereo system, which as I've mentioned was very good and very, very loud. During non-party times, the television room was a popular hangout, particularly once we got the stadium seating up. If nothing was good on cable, we often ended up watching people play video games, thereby anticipating Twitch.
While there were quite a few windows they were all at the bottom of assorted window wells to the front or driveway side of the house. It was pretty dark down there at the best of times. Unlike the hardwood featured on the other floors of the house, this part of the basement had tile floors. The tile was fortunate as in the last few years of the house we had some sewer line problems which eventually led to us digging up the line from the street to the sewer and replacing it. As you may have surmised, we had to map the basement floors on short notice on several occasions.
If you stood with your back to the bar during a party, you would see a locked door next to the pop machine. That part of the basement was off-limits to partygoers, and we'll go there in our next post.