Tyler House

Tyler House

Neighborhood:	Dodd
Occupancy:	35 (25 singles, 5 doubles)
Common areas:	living room, Moose Room
Kitchen?	full kitchen
Laundry:	1 washers, 1 dryers
Bathrooms:	9 toilets 10? sinks 7? showers 0 urinals 0 tubs
Vending:	drink machine in the kitchen
Built:	1926
Renovated:	1970s
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Tyler House is a converted fraternity (its original Greek letters can still be seen on the southern entrance pillar). Despite its distance from campus (an extra 5 minutes' walking time to get to where you want to go--and even the 0.8 miles to the art studio only takes about 15 minutes), it is actually a nice living space. Its only real flaws are the lack of common space on the upper floors and the lack of adequate laundry facilities. However, Tyler Annex is just a short walk away.

Tyler Annex is about fifty feet closer than Tyler House to the rest of the Williams campus.

Tyler 1st Floor

Location of the only common areas, the spacious living room and the Moose Room, as well as the kitchen, the laundry room, the trash and recycling room, two enormous doubles, and three wheelchair-accessible bathrooms (two, inexplicably, side-by-side off the kitchen).

The kitchen also gives access to the staircase leading to the completely separate second-floor suite, rooms 214, 215, and 216. This suite can only be reached by this staircase and by a fire escape outside, making it even more self-contained than the third-floor suite 305.

The kitchen

Fully equipped, with a double sink, oven, microwave, refrigerator, freezer, pantry, and kitchen table and chairs. Dodd neighborhood purchased a set of cooking utensils for the dorm in 2007-2008, but it's still advisable to bring your own cooking equipment, as things have a tendency to go missing.

The living room

Has a working fireplace (seldom used, as is the one in the Moose Room), assorted chairs, a couch, and two tables. Nice for studying or relaxing if the Moose Room is in use (if you close the door between the rooms, little noise carries).

The Moose Room

The name became misleading after the 2006-2007 school year, when the titular moose head was thrown in the fireplace and burned. But the door sign still reads "Moose Room" (or "Moose of Doom," as some enterprising soul altered it to), and the room still has a satisfyingly 19th-century feel. It's paneled in dark wood, with a wooden floor and large bay windows on the north wall. A large banquet table hosts many a party over the course of the school year. The pool table and upright piano see far less use, but the TV is often on.

Tyler 2nd Floor

In 2007-2008, still home, despite the administration's efforts to forcibly integrate the diverse student body through the neighborhood system, to a lot of athletes, the traditional denizens of Tyler.

Tyler 3rd Floor

Home to twelve rooms of ridiculously disparate dimensions. 303 and 304 are much smaller than the not-to-scale floorplan would lead you to believe--there is enough floor space for a twin bed, a desk, a chair, and the occupant, and that's about it unless you get creative. Even then it's a stretch.

305A and 305B share the floor's only common room, room 305, which can be locked, making the three rooms on the west end of the hall a self-contained suite.

306 is a fairly good-sized room with a walk-in closet. 307 is of comparable size, but without the walk-in closet. 310 is slightly larger, but the closet is too small to be very useful.

308 and 309 are moderately large rooms.

311 and 312 are quite large. But 302 takes the prize for largest room on the floor, rivaling the first-floor doubles in size. It is essentially a two-room apartment, with a small foyer-like entry room leading into a large bedroom area.

313 and 314 are bathrooms. They each have only one sink, which is a problem if more than one person tries to occupy the bathroom at a time.

Tyler environs

Tyler driveway

On your first trip to Tyler, you may feel as though you've completely left campus: you have to walk past Mission Park, past Thompson Hall, and cross Park Street to walk through two imposing stone pillars and up a long driveway that seems much longer than the roughly one-tenth of a mile that it is.

Approximately twenty lights usually illuminate the long walk, but they are occasional targets for (usually-drunken) aggression. Without the string of lights, after dark the distance between the last streetlight on Park Street and the lamp at the top of the driveway becomes a yawning black pit.

In early 2008, a Dodge Durango skidded out of control on the icy driveway and smashed into the northern entrance pillar, demolishing it and totaling the car. The pillar was rebuilt in May.

Tyler backyard

Used briefly in August and September, deserted for much of the year, on the first warm day of spring it will be flooded with students who've missed numerous outdoor activities (barbecuing, Wiffle beer, etc.). In 2008, it was home to several odd end-of-year activities, including a lamp burning and, on the Sunday of Reading Period, a massive crayfish barbecue.

The meadow

There is a stretch of land between the driveway and the first house to the north of Tyler that is more or less left alone during the year. You can often see deer there at dusk or at night, and in spring it becomes overgrown with wildflowers. Fireflies have been spotted there in May. The grassy area closer to the driveway, which is mowed regularly, makes a pleasant warm-weather spot to read or study.