Alpha Xi Delta House, circa 1989
Fraternity row was established in the early 1900s while sorority housing concentrated on John Street. The fraternity district migrated southward centering on Chalmers Street and most sororities moved to Urbana by the Greek house building boom in the 1920s.
In May 2000, the Student Life and Culture Archival Program and the Society for the Preservation of Greek Housing (SPGH) initiated a fraternity chapter history project to document the rich heritage of the University of Illinois Greek system.
The Society for the Preservation of Greek Housing exists to preserve and document the unique architecture and historical significance of fraternal housing structures on the campus of the University of Illinois and beyond and to document the formation and contributions of the Greek fraternal system locally and at other select campuses.
Funded by the Society and administered by the Archives, the project’s goal is to complete chapter histories for each social fraternity and sorority on the University of Illinois campus–both active and defunct. Research assistants have completed 16 histories: Alpha Delta Pi, Alpha Gamma Delta, Alpha Phi, Alpha Tau Omega, Chi Omega, Delta Tau Delta, FarmHouse, Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Phi Kappa Psi, Phi Mu, Pi Beta Phi, Sigma Chi, Sigma Nu, Sigma Phi Delta, and Zeta Tau Alpha.
Greek houses not mentioned above may be listed under the brief Archives documentation located at right.
