70 Amherst, formerly know as Senior House, is the oldest dormitory at MIT. Since its construction in 1916, it has served as the Institute’s first dormitory and on-campus fraternity, a mixed undergraduate and graduate dorm, an all-graduate facility, a seniors’ dormitory, and military housing during World War II. The building is an L-shaped building directly adjacent to the residence of the President of MIT. A tower at the center of the North side features neo-classical columns that reflect the architecture of the original MIT Cambridge campus.
The building’s address was 4 Ames Street, but is 70 Amherst Street now, because the main entry was moved to what originally was the back of the building. Before implementation of the current single-entry system, Senior House had six entries, named for people from MIT history: Ware (William R. Ware, professor of architecture), Atkinson (William P. Atkinson, professor of English language and literature), Runkle (John Daniel Runkle, second president of MIT), Holman (Silas W. Holman, professor of physics), Nichols (William Ripley Nichols, professor of chemistry), Crafts (James Crafts, fourth president of MIT).
Each entry has four floors, except for Runkle, which has six. The entries are arranged in an L-shape around a central courtyard. Each leg of the L is referred to by the initials of the three entries it contains: “WAR” and “HNC”. The fifth and sixth floors (existing only in Runkle) are collectively referred to as “Towers”.