Toll hall scripps college5/1/2023 ![]() This national trend was evident at Concordia, whose shift started during 1969-1972, when Dean of Women Dorothy Olson worked to relax the rules placed on female students such as curfew times. Because of the narrower age gap, restrictions placed on the students often loosened in comparison to when they were supervised by house heads. Towards the 1970s dormitory house heads or “housemothers” were phased out of colleges across the country and were often replaced with married graduate students who were only a few years older than the residents. A hall council consisting of five students also assisted in making sure that all was in order in the dorm. House heads were responsible for making sure that students were not engaging in inappropriate behaviors with the opposite sex, enforcing curfew times, and essentially acting in loco parentis. Similar to other universities at the time, house heads regulated residents’ behavior and manners. Fjelstad follows the newer layout, which encouraged only supervised social interaction between residents in public common rooms. There was a rising fear that close relationships between women would turn into homosexual relations between the residents. This layout was deemed the best until around the 1920s when the design of women’s dormitories shifted to having many smaller, cubicle-like rooms that lined either side of a hallway without private common rooms to adjoin them. Before the 1920s, women at colleges had often lived in cottages or suites on campus, with much less emphasis on the difference between public and private spaces. This layout was common for women’s dormitories in the 1920s and can be seen in the design of older residence halls at women’s universities such as Toll Hall at Scripps College in Claremont, California. In addition, the common rooms were located near the main public entry so that students would be under supervision. The rooms in Fjelstad were arranged near two common rooms, today called the main lounge and Frida Nilsen Lounge, allowing women to socialize with those living around them in a single-sex environment. Fjelstad was designed to house 131 women in sixty-three double rooms and five single rooms on three floors, along with accommodations for the Dean of Women and the house head. The original dormitory furnishings were purchased by the Concordia Women’s League, a group of female faculty and faculty wives who furnished multiple buildings on campus. ![]() ![]() ![]() Constructed in English Gothic Tudor style, the building was faced with a Mankato limestone from a local quarry. Features included individual wardrobes for each girl, kitchenettes, an off-campus girls’ club room, laundry room, pressing room and shampoo room. Constructed in 1938, the building was designed by William Ingemann of Globe Building as a women’s dormitory that included many comforts of home for its residents. Named in the honor of Helga Fjelstad who served thirty-three years as a matron of the college, Fjelstad Hall sits on the northern end of Concordia’s campus. Though periodically remodeled and updated, the dormitory was used consistently for female campus housing until 2014. One of the most attractive buildings on the college grounds, it provided female students comfortable accommodations and supervision while they were away from home. Fjelstad Hall was built on Concordia’s campus in the late 1930s as a new women’s dormitory.
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