The FIJI house at Indiana University c. 1927 as shown in the October 1927 edition of the Phi Gamma Delta Magazine.
(Phi Gamma Delta Digital Repository )
The fraternity Phi Gamma Delta once had a home at 631 East Third Street in what is sometimes referred to as The Old Crescent. Known as “the Fiji house,” the fraternity house was torn down in 2017. Now greenspace, one listener wanted to know the university’s plans for the site.
Like many universities, Indiana University acquires property for long-term planning but without any specific or immediate projects in mind. That’s according to Tom Morrison, IU’s vice president for Capital Planning and Facilities.
“Sometimes, if you draw the line in between when we acquired property and when we eventually build upon that property, you might find decades in between,” he said.
Morrison said acquiring 631 E. Third St. was important because “it was the last piece of the older part of campus the university didn’t already own.” It’s the part of campus known as The Old Crescent.
“The Old Crescent was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980,” said University Historian James Capshew in an email. “It encompasses the earliest parts of the Dunn’s Woods campus, both the woods proper and the buildings on four sides which frame the woods, including Owen, Wylie, Maxwell, Kirkwood, Lindley, Swain East, and Franklin Halls, the Frances Morgan Swain Student Building, and the Kirkwood Observatory,” he said. “In general usage, Bryan, Baier, and Swain West Halls, which were built later, are also included because they complete the picture frame around Dunn’s Woods.”
The university had eyed one small slice of the crescent for decades – the site of the old Fiji house. Reportedly, it missed a chance at the site in the 1940s.
But now that it has it, it’s simply greenspace. Morrison acknowledges people speculate about the university’s plans for the site.
“There wasn't then and there isn't now an immediate project on the horizon,” he said. “Many people probably go to an automatic assumption that it might have been an expansion of the law school, there were others who thought it was going to be an expansion of physics, and still others who think … something in between. And, really, we have not, since we acquired the property had any plans for the site.”
631 E. Third Street is part of IU's historic Old Crescent and the former site of a Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house. (Courtesy Phi Gamma Delta digital repository)
The Zeta Chapter of Phi Gamma Delta had called 631 E. Third St. home for more than a century. When it needed to move, the fraternity, often referred to as “Fiji,” obtained its current location at East Eighth and North Woodlawn in a land swap. IU trustees approved the deal in 2014. The new Fiji house was completed in 2016, and the old one came down the following year.
The Zeta chapter house at IU under construction at 431 Woodlawn Ave. in December 2016. (Courtesy Phi Gamma Delta digital repository)
The university originally tagged six buildings on that block for demolition to make room for the new 52,000-square-foot fraternity house.But the demolition proposal prompted public protest because many homes in the North Woodlawn neighborhood dated back to the early 1900s.
The public pushback was so great the university agreed to relocate five of the homes and demolish only one – reportedly at a cost of $1 million. The relocated homes went to vacant lots the university owned in the area.
The property at 631 E. Third St. – the site of the old Fiji house -- will remain vacant, too, save for landscaping. Morrison said the site will be greenspace “for the foreseeable future.”
According to Morrison, the university has just come through 10 years’ worth of construction to match academic space to student enrollment.
“Think the global and international studies building, the Ferguson building that we just opened, the additions to the Kelley School, the additions to the O’Neill School/SPEA, and two buildings related to the Luddy School,” he said. “That was a significant addition of square footage during the last decade.”
He said about two-thirds of the university’s capital projects were renovations and that priority remains. Space-wise, he said the university is “in a pretty good place.”
“We know that our capacity to utilize the space we have with the students we have today is about right,” he said.
This story has been updated to clarify The Old Crescent area of IU campus. Ballentine Hall was previously listed as part of The Old Crescent but it is not.
