Two New Clay County Historic Preservation Publications
August 23, 2024A History of Greek Houses in Vermillion, South Dakota
A New Book!
Hot off the press! Evelyn Schlenker wrote a new book called “A History of Greek Houses in Vermilion, South Dakota”. The book details the houses occupied by local social organizations and Greek houses from 1903 until the present. It extends the information that Nancy McCahren compiled in 1982 presenting 100 years of Greek life at the University of South Dakota (USD) as part of the USD centennial celebration.
In the book, a narrative about the social organization and chapter garnered by the national Greek organization precedes early pictures of the houses. If a house exists, I included a colored photograph and information about the building’s function. In the book, I use the term “occupied” because an organization leased or rented a house. Later a corporation affiliated with the organization may have purchased the building or constructed a new chapter building. With permission, I used images of older buildings from Coyote yearbooks, the USD photograph collection, and USD Archives and Special Collections.
To round out the book, I include information about the carefully researched and executed 1921 “Cannon Caper” instigated by the local social fraternity Alpha Tau ( that became Delta Tau Delta) when the members stole the Civil War Cannon from the front of the Elk Point Courthouse. You can see cannon today in the W. H. Over Museum as part of a Civil War exhibit.
On a sadder note, fires occurred in many Greek houses. Tau Kappa Epsilon’s (TKE) house fires stand out. Their chapter house suffered two fires, one in 1961 and the most devastating in 1982 when their house was destroyed. The brothers cleaned 28,000 bricks from the old house that formed the basis for a new chapter house occupying the same site (505 East Main Street).
The appendix summarizes the addresses of buildings that sororities and fraternities occupied and the location of current Greek houses. Moreover, a map of Vermillion helps the reader locate the site of houses using asterisks for existing structures and daggers if a building no longer exists. Using this convention, TKE gets both a dagger and an asterisk. Red Greek letters denote the locations of current Greek organizations.
Because so many of the buildings exist, you can tour Willow Street, East Main Street, North and South University Streets, North Yale Street, North Harvard Street, Park Lane, Prospect Street, Elm Street, Forest Avenue, and Court Street to appreciate buildings still standing and what their architectural features looked like decades ago.
The cover photograph is from the 1913 Coyote yearbook depicting Beta Gamma members in front of their chapter house. Courtesy of the University of South Dakota Archives and Special Collections.
