After two years, the newly coed Hill House reopened with a slew of new features, including fingerprint locks.
The new school year marks new beginnings for the entire Choate campus, but especially so for Hill House. After a 2019 fire caused significant water damage, the School began renovating the historic dorm. Now, after two years, Hill House is once again home to the college counseling offices, new private dining rooms, a faculty lounge, and a new, coed dorm.
Hill House’s renovation came with a variety of upgrades and new features for the students who were lucky enough to secure a spot in the dorm. “I think we did a great job renovating Hill House, and it is definitely the best dorm on campus in terms of facilities,” said Nathan Lang ’22, one of the Hill House prefects this year.
For example, students now have access to laundry rooms on each floor, and new fingerprint locks have replaced the traditional key-operated locks, in part to prevent residents of the opposite gender entering each other’s rooms. There have been a few complaints, however, regarding the unreliability of the new locks. Roommates Celia Glover ’24 and Sydney Kim ’24 reported having to repeatedly call each other throughout the day due to the fingerprint scanner malfunctioning and preventing them from entering their room.
Hill House’s common rooms have also received an upgrade, as each of the dorm’s four “pods” has its own common room. Resident Grace Liu ’23 explained, “We have six common rooms in total. There are two coed common rooms, and four smaller common rooms for the north and south sides.”
Additionally, after decades as a boys’ dorm, Hill House is now the third coed dormitory on campus, joining the Kohler Environmental Center and West Wing, the all-gender dorm. “This is one of the decisions we made to create a more equitable and supportive housing model,” said Dean of Students Mr. Mike Velez ’00.
According to residents, the multi-gender dynamic has been a success so far. Liu said, “When an adviser is there, we play board games in the coed common room until midnight on Friday night. All the dorm meetings are coed, and we play fun games that [dorm adviser Dr. Chris] Hogue comes up with.”
Still, Hill House enforces some divide between genders. Rather than students of all genders living among each other in a single hall, in Hill House, all female residents live on the south side of the building, while all males live on the north side. The sides aren’t allowed to interact with each other after lights out. “To keep it safe after the advisers leave, the girls are only allowed to use the third floor coed common room, and the guys are on the second floor,” explained resident Sarah Yildirim ’23.
Mr. Bari Robinson, an acting teacher and adviser in the new dorm, said, “It’ll be really exciting for people to see the possibilities of this place and see how beautiful it is for the students.”
