Received your letter yesterday and must say I was mighty glad to hear from you. I thought you had disowned me for spending so much money (jokingly). I wrote you last . . . .

At left is an image of the 1920s Freshman Hall that appeared on the Irish Legends web site page featuring the recollections that Walter C. Houghton of the Class of 1926, wrote for the NDU Alumni News about his memories of Notre Dame during the early 1920s. The image's caption:
Residents of Freshmen Hall congregate outside of the building.

In his January, 2001 Alumni Newsletter article, Houghton recalled:

In 1922, when the class of '26 enrolled, the university had between 1,200 - 1,400 students. . . . Apparently there was an enrollment surge, because there wasn't enough rooms to house the students and two temporary structures were hastily built. They were called Freshman Hall and Sophomore Hall.

We called these the "barracks." Freshman Hall was a long, narrow, two-story wooden structure with an entrance in the center. There were about 40 rooms with three students to a room.

The rector's office was at the entrance so he could see everyone who entered or left. . . We had a strict 10 p.m. curfew, but it didn't take long for the students to find a drain pipe at the end of the building that they could climb and get in the building through a window.

(The original Freshman Hall stood at the present site of Breen-Phillips Hall. Sophomore Hall was where Zahm Hall now stands. When Freshman Hall was torn down, Sophomore Hall was re-named Freshman Hall.)

Click HERE to return to presentation's linked main text page.