Written by Leanna Barcelona
Here at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, we have the number one graduate program in Library and Information Science. Many people are aware of this, but not as many know that the number one iSchool is housed in a former fraternity house.
Prior to the 1990s, 501 East Daniel Street belonged to the Heth chapter of Acacia, a historically masonic fraternity on campus. They acquired the property in 1914 and built an Old English country house with gables and a high-pitched roof. A little over thirty years later, they purchased a neighboring property as an annex, which later was combined with the original building for a larger structure in the 1970s. Rumor has it that the fraternity ran into some trouble and that is how the university acquired their house, but another tune claims there was a fire that damaged the house and the fraternity, unable to cover the entire costs of reconstruction, sold the building to the University. Acacia lived a nomadic life for several years, moving from old house to old house, until they bought the Phi Mu house at 302 East Armory in 2012, where they now reside.[1]
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