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Whether filled with milk crates and lava lamps or LED lights and laptops, residence rooms at Puget Sound have always been more than just places to sleep. It’s the place where you go to relax after class, where you learn to fold your own laundry, where you spend all night writing a term paper, and where friendships are forged that can last for a lifetime. 

Over the decades, campus housing has certainly evolved—there are no more eight-person sleeping porches in Schiff Hall, for example, which is where Sara Freeman ’95 (who is now a theatre arts professor at Puget Sound) and her roommates lived in 1992. The A-frames and chalets built to address a shortage of student housing in the late 1960s and early 1970s were removed in 1998. And all residences are co-ed today, either by door or by floor. 

But there are still quads in Anderson-Langdon, which both Laurie Cooper ’75 and Nick Contento ’94 called home. Members of the university’s eight fraternities and sororities still live in the Greek chapter houses on Union Avenue. Upperclassmen still love living in the 47 university-owned houses, with names like the Outhaus, the Adobe Castle, Ben and Jerry’s Literary House, and more. And the lounges in the residence halls—including those in Seward and Regester halls, which were renovated in 2023 and 2024—are still comfortable hubs for both studying and socializing. 

In this photo essay, we revisit dorm life across the decades, and see that no matter the furniture, fashion, or floor plan, every room tells a story about what it means to find your home at the ��������.