Successful Men Find Eliot Congenial Haven

Present size of House: 446.

Vacancies for freshmen: about 140.

Rooms for freshmen: two, three, and four man suites, many triples, few doubles, very few deconverted rooms.

Price range of places for freshmen: $100 to $196 per term.

"A man has to be somebody to get along in Eliot House," according to House-master John H. Finley '25. That sums up pretty well the chance a freshman has of making a good adjustment to the largest and most distinctive of the seven Houses.

Athlete, clubman, esthete, scholar, or writer, the man who makes his way to the top in some phase of College activity will find Eliot a stimulating and congenial home.

But those who prefer to center their activities and contacts within their House or within their entry may find Eliot a forbidding place. Unless they go armed with a large stock of friends (and the House is interested in groups anywhere up to eight or ten members), they will not find many functions designed to get them acquainted with other House members.

The current stereotype pictures Eliot as the den of the clubmen, practically a club in itself. Like most stereotypes, this one is inaccurate; a better composite of the Mastodon would include elements of the social, the athletic, the scholarly, the classical, and the indifferent.

Vigorous Partics

The social quality comes partly from the clubs, partly from the vigorous parties which spread over the courtyard and through the entryways every football afternoon. The athletic appears in the traditionally strong House football team and crew, and the regular Eliot hegemony on the varsity shell.

Evidence of the scholarly is easily available; Eliot men won both of Harvard's Rhodes Scholarships this year, and took seven of the 24 junior and senior Phi Beta Kappas.

The classical is largely embodied in Finley, who has built up the Classics staff of the House and has tried to attract concentrators in Greek and Latin.

Superimposed indifference

Superimposed on all the other characteristics is the indifference which gives the Eliot man a superficial air of unfriendliness.

As far as physical facilities are concerned, Eliot has its good and bad sides. The good side looks out over the river or on one of the finest of the House courtyards. The bad sides boast not only a full view of the subway yards, but also an excellent lookout on the alleyway where food is brought into the central kitchen and garbage is noisily removed in the early hours of the morning.

The common room is Eliot's shame, being little larger than a normal living room. To compensate partially for this, there is a complete photographic darkroom somewhere in the basement and two music practice rooms.

Eliot has tended toward a few large, all-House activities during the year, and little in the way of smaller, more specialized functions. Aside from the annual House dinner, there is an Elizabethan play just before Christmas every year--a tradition taken over by other Houses--and two symposiums a year with distinguished faculty members speaking on literary topics.

Rooms in the House are generally larger than those of the other new buildings, Lowell and Dunster, and even the converted suites have plenty of space.

Food comes from the central kitchen, with all that that implies, but the weekly teas at the Master's and the convenient Eliot Grill preserve some vestiges of gracious living.House residents use the Eliot Grill until 12 midnight six nights a week and save themselves a trip to the Square, Purchases are made with coupone the cost of which is added to the term bill.