{"id":63396,"date":"2013-03-10T12:42:18","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T16:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=63396"},"modified":"2016-01-14T12:07:10","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T17:07:10","slug":"chase-lounge-sheds-function-room-identity-in-favor-of-casual-chilling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2013\/03\/10\/chase-lounge-sheds-function-room-identity-in-favor-of-casual-chilling\/","title":{"rendered":"History Lesson: Chase Lounge sheds function-room identity in favor of casual chilling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leisure Suite<\/p>\n

By Doug Hubley
\nPhotographs courtesy of Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collection Library<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t billed as such, but a campus announcement in October from student activities director Keith Tannenbaum proclaimed a historic shift.<\/p>\n

\"Photograph<\/a>

Photograph courtesy of Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collection Library<\/p><\/div>\n

After nearly a century as a venue for everything from dances to debates and poetry readings to protests, Chase Hall Lounge has been reinvented as a casual lounge for students.<\/p>\n

Equipped with portable podium and grand piano, the lounge for most of its life was less a lounge than Bates\u2019 go-to venue for all kinds of campus events: contradances, faculty meetings, flu shot clinics, lectures, readings, blood drives, symposia, formal dinners, dance performances \u2014 even student protests, such as the one in 1979 after The Bates Student<\/em> riled up the campus by inventing an award to gain entr\u00e9e to former President Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s transformation, part of an overall freshening of Chase Hall, happened because students wanted an \u201cinviting drop-in or \u2018hangout\u2019 space,\u201d said Tannenbaum \u2014 \u201ca casual and comfortable spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

The timing is nice, as Chase Hall was conceived a century ago and dedicated in December 1919.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The clubby, masculine look of Chase Lounge here and at left reflects the building\u2019s initial purpose as a \u201chome for our young men,\u201d in President Chase\u2019s words. Photograph courtesy of Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collection Library<\/p><\/div>\n

Named for Bates President George Colby Chase, who had died that May, the hall was largely a response to the fact that Bates\u2019 all-male competitor schools had fraternities. Though President Chase had no desire to reverse the college\u2019s \u201ccherished\u201d no-fraternity policy, the early 1900s was a time when the college\u2019s male-female balance was tipping toward women. President Chase was forceful in his belief that Bates needed a well-appointed \u201chome for our young men,\u201d both for social reasons and, as noted in various President\u2019s Reports, to counter the lure of demon rum downtown.<\/p>\n

But the men\u2019s club angle didn\u2019t last long, nor did the lounge\u2019s identity as simply a lounge.<\/p>\n

Coed movie nights, wildly popular in Hathorn, came right over to Chase Lounge in 1919. Three years later, when the college lifted its ban on dancing, the lounge was where Bates men and women went cheek to cheek for the first time in public.<\/p>\n

That began a long tradition of Saturday night dances in Chase Lounge, which continued into the late 1960s when the college\u2019s first documented rock group, the Hanseatic League, was the house band. That was when tough rules governing gender relations were slowly starting to ease, making Chase the \u201conly place to find people of the opposite sex,\u201d as Jill Howroyd Lawler \u201968 told Bates for a Hanseatic League retrospective in 2003.<\/p>\n

Today, thanks to donor support, the lounge is fitted with comfy new leather chairs and sofas, an electric fireplace, a pool table and 60-inch TVs, part of a larger Chase Hall makeover intended to reinforce the building\u2019s identity as a student center.<\/p>\n

The Den has been spruced up and designated the campus pub. The lobby is now bright, spacious and welcoming, with Don Lent\u2019s \u201cCanterbury Tales\u201d mural a well-lit focal point. A new lift has improved physical access to the building.<\/p>\n

And the old \u201cBig Room\u201d in Memorial Commons is now a function room that can accommodate nearly 700 \u2014 a fitting venue to resurrect those legendary Saturday night dances, should anyone so desire.<\/p>\n

\"After<\/a>

After Bates lifted its ban on dancing in 1922, Chase Lounge was where students went cheek to cheek. Photograph courtesy of Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collection Library<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once the rare Bates place where boy could meet girl (and vice-versa), Chase Lounge sheds its function-room identity in favor of casual chilling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":63400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10856,11027,9873],"class_list":["post-63396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-batesnews","tag-bates-magazine","tag-magazine-history-lesson","tag-winter-2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63396"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64355,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63396\/revisions\/64355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}