Residential Life

Residential Houses

The school’s vision for residential life was inaugurated over a decade ago. The dream of family-sized houses instead of the larger, more institutional dormitories began in 1992 when a faculty house was renovated into a home for 12 students and one faculty family. Card House was an immediate success with both boarders and their parents. It became the model for the future as three new residence halls were built.

As a result of our $14 million Cornerstone Campaign, that first small house was duplicated across campus. Watts House and Woods House, built in 1996, are two identical 12-student homes on the hill behind the Owen Student Union. In 1999, a third new 12-student home, Colmore House, was completed facing the quad. To bring all the residence halls up to the high standard of these new houses, renovations were undertaken in St. Mary’s Hall and Harvey House. These two residence halls are divided by floor into separate “houses” with their own houseparents, common room, and identity.

Today all our boarding students live in gracious, homey residences with front porches and rocking chairs. Students live in renovated rooms with private telephones (two lines per room) and internet access (two ports per room); and every student is part of a small St. Andrew’s-Sewanee family. It is an increasing struggle to remain small and personable, to act more like a community and less like an institution, but it is a struggle SAS believes is worth it.