Clara Dickson Hall

Clara Dickson Hall is a freshman dorm, located on the North Campus of Cornell University. It is the largest dormitory in the Ivy League, housing over 450 students^{[citation needed]}. Clara Dickson is also home to the Multicultural Living Learning Unit, or "McLLU".

Facilities

Clara Dickson Hall was constructed in 1946, in the Colonial style, and named after Clara Dickson, the mother of Cornell's first president Andrew Dickson White. The building has a just under 140,000 square feet (13,000 m²) of floor space, making it the largest dorm not only on Cornell campus, but in the entire Ivy League.

Dickson, as it is more commonly known, also has a notoriously awkward numbering system for rooms. Room numbers start with the floor the room is on, followed by a number indicating which side of the building they are on; rooms in the southwest are said to be on the "5" side and rooms in the northeast half are said to be on the "6" side. Furthermore, the basement (which is the building's ground floor at the back side due to its being on a hill) is labeled as the first floor. So, for example, a room on the first floor, on the far left side of the building (when looking at it from the front) would be said to be in "2-5". All room numbers are 4 digits, with the last two increasing as one moves toward the center of Dickson. For example, 2692 is the closest room to the middle on the 6 side. The far end of 2-6 has housed McLLU since 1999, and the last hall at the far end of 2-5 is commonly referred to as D-20 (though there is no real structural or administrative difference between it and the rest of the building).

Clara Dickson is also an anomaly in freshman housing, in that the overwhelming majority of rooms are singles. This is with the exception of the 32 odd corner rooms, which are triple; there are very few doubles. Each side of each floor has one large bathroom for each sex on each side of the building, which has 4 stalls, 5 showers, and a tub. Each floor also has its own lounge at the center of the floor, dividing the 5 and 6 sides. The exception to this is the 1st floor (floor 2), which has the building's main lobby at its center, and as such, has two lounges: one about half way down the 5 side and one about half way down the 6 side. All lounges have TVs with Direct TV, though the quality, size, and reliability of the TVs varies greatly with floor. Furthermore, there is a Foosball table in the third floor (floor 4) lounge and a ping-pong table in the main lobby.

External links

• Staff Maintained Web Site

Coordinates: 42°27′17.16″N 76°28′45.87″W / 42.4547667°N 76.4794083°W / 42.4547667; -76.4794083