Alpha Rho Chi Fraternity House, Professional fraternity house at University of Illinois, Champaign, United States.
The Alpha Rho Chi Fraternity House is a residence building for an architecture-focused brotherhood at the University of Illinois in Champaign, constructed with French and English architectural influences. The structure features an L-shaped layout with a distinctive corner tower, steep tiled roofs, and an arched entryway beneath the tower.
The building was completed in 1928, following the establishment of a student group that formed in 1911 and became Alpha Rho Chi fraternity in 1914. This brotherhood was a pioneer in advancing architectural education at the college level.
The chapter's name, Anthemios, honors a Greek architect, and Alpha Rho Chi comes from the first three letters of the Greek word for architecture. Members were architecture students, and the chapter was one of the fraternity's two founding chapters, formed as the Arcus Society in 1911 and installed as Anthemios in 1914.
The house stands at the corner of a residential block near the Urbana–Champaign campus, so it is seen from the public sidewalk rather than entered. From the street, look up at the corner tower above the arched entrance, then follow the L-shaped plan to the brick chimneys at its narrow ends. The steep tile hip roof and decorative brickwork read best in raking light.
The 1997 listing rests on the building's architecture, not on the fraternity's educational role: it was cited as a notable work of the local firm Royer, Danley, and Smith, designers of the 1928 house. The corner tower over the arched entrance and the brick chimneys at the narrow ends of the L-shaped plan are among the details that distinguish it.
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