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{ 119 } One of the most unusual and historic buildings on the Ole Miss campus occupied the site on the edge of the Hilgard Cut, just beyond the bridge that connected the campus to the city of Oxford. The dramatic Delta Psi House, destroyed by fire in 1943, was temporarily the home of William Faulkner, his parents and brothers. Before and after that strange interlude, it housed the Delta Psi fraternity. The fraternity house was part of the second wave of academic buildings at the college. William Nichols, the architect responsible for Mississippi’s Old Capitol and Governor’s Mansion , was commissioned to design and create the original structures for the 1848 campus. Of those, only the Lyceum remains. The entire campus had been threatened with destruction when Union troops torched Oxford, but some convenient connections between faculty and officers saved the Lyceum and the other buildings . Unfortunately, their historic value was not recognized over the next half century, and one by one they were pulled down and replaced with more modern creations. By the late 1880s, enrollment was growing , and the campus stretched beyond its early boundaries. Two of the most exuberant buildings of that era were Ventress Hall and the Delta Psi House.Ventress Hall remains, revered for its slender tower, Tiffany stained-glass windows, and red roof.The Delta Psi House was strikingly similar and likely designed by the same architect, but its purpose was dramatically different. Ventress Hall was intended for library and academic space; the fraternity boys who moved into Delta Psi were probably not particularly concerned with either. Ventress Hall was the creation of Memphis architect C.G.Rosenplanter,who incorporated red bricks, round stone arches, scattered gables, and a four-story tubular turret between the two primary wings. It was completed in 1888, a year before the Delta Psi House, which would lend credence to the theory that Rosenplanter’s success with the academic building led to his hiring for work on the fraternity house. Delta Psi was likewise a dark red brick building, three stories with a windowed tower at the corner. A series of tall round-arched windows must have poured light into the second story, and the main doorway was framed by an arched fanlight . The steeply pitched roofline was broken by several gables. Delta Psi was the third fraternity on the university campus, established in 1855. Thirty-three years later, it must have been quite successful socially and financially, as it built the first fraternity house on campus. The brick edifice would be filled with young men until 1912, when the Greek system was abolished. Delta Psi House • • • { 120 } deLta psi HoUse Friction between Greeks and non-Greeks had been rising throughout the school’s first decades. It reached a peak during the tenure of Chancellor Andrew Kincannon (1907–1914). The faculty was fed up with childish shenanigans that distracted from the academic atmosphere, and they found a willing ally in state legislator Lee Russell. He had been snubbed by all the clubs during his freshman rush, and he carried the grudge into adulthood and down to the capitol. Somehow, Russell cajoled his fellow legislators into an outright ban on Greek fraternities, and in 1912 they were shuttered campuswide. College boys may be high-spirited, but they are also resourceful. Underground clubs developed to replace the formal groups, and the pranks continued unabated. In 1920, eight years after the ban, twenty-five of Mississippi’s future leaders were expelled after burning an effigy of Lee Russell, who had risen to the governorship. While all this commotion was going on, Murry Falkner was struggling just to make a living. The father of four boys had never lived up to his own father’s standards and had failed miserably at one venture after another.When his hardware business collapsed in 1918, he applied for a job as an administrator at the college, and, through the clout of his father, he was hired. The job came with campus housing, and by Christmas of 1919, all six of the Falkners were living in the former Delta Psi House. William, the second son, had returned from his Canadian Air Force adventure and was establishing his reputation as “Count No ’Count” around Oxford. He The Delta Psi House served as Murry Falkner’s home during the years when fraternities were banned on the Ole Miss campus. Photo courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History. [3.145.64.241] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 04:51...

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