USD Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity to build new chapter house across from campus
The Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity at the University of South Dakota is going to start building a new house this month.
At the end of June, the 92-year-old chapter house that’s seen nearly 1,800 young men call its halls home at 327 North Pine Street in Vermillion will be razed, and construction will begin.
Work on the new building is estimated to last for one year, and the new home will open up to fraternity brothers by fall 2024. During construction, undergraduates will be housed together off-campus during the 2023-2024 school year and chapter meetings will be held at the Muenster University Center.
The chapter had 34 undergraduate members last year.
The house, which will be built on the same location as the current home across from the main Vermillion campus, will also feature an English Tudor style similar to the current home. The fraternity has raised $3.1 million of its $3.5 million goal in estimated construction costs. This new home will prioritize sophomores and fraternity officers with a capacity for 27 brothers.
Logan Lamphere, alumni association director for USD’s Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, said this will be the third chapter house the fraternity chapter has had in its 107-year history. The current house was originally built as the Alpha Phi sorority house in 1931, and the fraternity purchased it in 1937, making it the group’s second home since being chartered in 1916.
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In preparation to raze the home, the fraternity’s bronze letters were removed to reveal the original Alpha Phi sorority letters underneath, above the front door. This keystone will be preserved and presented to the Alpha Phi sorority during Dakota Days.
After celebrating their centennial in 2016, a group of alumni and undergraduates took a serious look at what the next 100 years of fraternity life might look like. In a 2019 engineering report, the group found that a rebuild would be necessary, and planning began for a capital campaign, Lamphere said.
The fraternity’s alumni include four South Dakota governors and other elected officials, businessmen, and community leaders. Some of those alumni formed the building committee, including campaign co-chairmen former Governor Dennis Daugaard (’75), former USD President Jim Abbott (’70), and former South Dakota Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mark Mickelson (’88).
“We really need to replace it with something we can be proud of, something that demonstrates that Lambda Chi is here to stay,” Daugaard said in a press release. “We need a house that can attract the kind of man that it has attracted over the years.”
Two other Greek organizations have also developed off-campus in recent memory — the Alpha Xi Delta sorority built a new chapter house in 2018, and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity built a new chapter house in 2020.
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: University of South Dakota Lambda Chi Alpha building new frat house
