We live in a very big house. 20 rooms, 6 bathrooms, common space galore, lots of light, and an intricate set of porches and decks give the house a lot of character. Here's your unabridged virtual tour of Le Maison de pika.

 

The front yard

Alternates between herb garden and prairie restoration.

The porch

A great place to relax on a lazy summer day or take refuge while you wait for SafeRide on a nasty November night.

 

The way to a pikan's heart is through their stomach. Here we serve up some hot lovin' at 6:15 every day. This is possible because we each do a kitchen duty once a week. Every night two pikans cook and two clean up after dinner. It takes a while to cook or clean for 30 people but the rest of the week a home-cooked dinner just appears and gets cleaned up by its self — pretty handy when you've got three problem sets due the next day. Sure beats ramen 6 nights a week.

The kitchen

We have everything you need to make delicious meals for the masses. Industrial grade ovens, an army of pots and pans, mixers, blenders, food processors — you name it. If we don't have something we need, we just ask our kitchen manager (an elected house position) and usually they buy it.

The Murph

This is our main living room. It's named "the murph" after an obstinate boarder (Murphy) who refused to move out when pika was converted from a boarding house to a fraternity in the early 70s. He boarded up the door and windows and threatened to squat there indefinitely. After letting this go on for some time, the new fraternity brothers broke in, only to find that the room was completely empty, except for an old typewriter. Murphy's loss is our gain. The murph is a great place to relax, play the piano or read by the fire. We hold our weekly (attendance optional) house meetings here as well.

The phone desk

pika has a centralized phone system with an extension and voicemail account for every room. When impatient parents and acquaintances can't wait 20 seconds to hear which extension to dial, they will call here and make some innocent bystander hunt down their target.

 

The workroom

To maintain and renovate a big old house like ours, you need a lot of tools. You'll find them our basement workroom where pikans can often be found toiling on their own random projects.

The storage room

Stuff goes in here. Sometimes it comes back out.

The TV room

We've got digital cable. We've got TiVo. We've got video games. We've got a big-screen TV. This is also where abandoned books and board games go to die.

The pantry

Where the dry goods stay. We stock lots of extra baking goods (flour sugar, etc) as well as bread, cereal, peanut butter, canned goods and the like here for everyone to make breakfast, lunch or midnight cookies with. We also stock some fruits, vegetables, and dairy products in the kitchen for general use.

The snack fridges

Soda, juice, candy. Just mark it down and it goes on your house bill.

The computer room

It's probably just a coincidence that the caffeine repository is right next to the computer room, where one can tool all night on our Athena (MIT network computing system) workstations. There are also ethernet and wireless connections to MIT's high speed network available throughout the house for personal computers.

The study room

Venture through the computer room and into the inner sanctum of the study room. Here you can suffer... er, study in peace and quiet. A major asset when your roommate gets on a Ricky Martin kick.

The laundry area

Free laundry.
Sweet.

The nothing

There used to be a darkroom, but it displeased us. Now there is nothing. That oughta keep the rest of the rooms in line.

 

The bike barns

Almost everyone at pika has a bike — after all, we're just a few minutes from campus on one. These barns keep our bikes dry and not stolen.

The other barns

Wood, metal scraps, old furniture, yard tools, a giant paper mache George Bush head... you know, the ordinary backyard shed stuff.

The porches

They've been built and renovated over many workweeks by handy pikans. Three stories, interconnected, roofdeck, treehouse, fire pole, playground slide... you name it.

 

The ... um ...

All of our rooms are named after some distinctive feature or anectdote. This single was traditionally known as the Crib, but then Kyle decided he didn't like how cramped the room was with the crib-like loft that it was named after, so he ripped it out and made the room twice as awesome. We don't really know what we call it now... front runners are "the Kyle" or "the end" (it's at the end of the hallway). (Update: it's "the end".) It's currently the default RA single. The RA (Resident Advisor) is the only pikan guaranteed a single. Everyone else must enter a lottery every semester for a single and for priority in choosing a double. All pikans are equal and a crusty senior gets the same odds as a sophomore who's just moving in.

The 1-71

Back in the day — and by "the day", I mean like, in the Great Depression — what is now pika was two family houses, 69 Chestnut St and 71 Chestnut St, separated by a firewall. When the houses were consolidated and turned into a boarding house, the rooms were numbered. We still haven't gotten around to naming this single, thus it is the 1-71.

The drug

So named after some summer boarders left it trashed and littered with drug paraphernalia. This double has a sleeping closet ("the capsule"), so your all night tooling doesn't have to disturb your roommate's beauty sleep.

The porch

This single was once the front porch for 71 Chestnut street.

The sink

This smaller double has a sink.

The rush

Back when freshmen were allowed to live off campus, they were assigned temporary housing during orientation and given four or five days to visit any dorms or FSILGs they were interested in and decide where they wanted to live. Then they got booted out, and either moved into a dorm based on the preferences they gave entered into a big happiness optimization algorithm or went to an FSILG they had pledged. Thus, the origin of the term "rush" is revealed. It was an especially intense time at FSILGs as they attracted the bulk of their members in this period. The whole house came back early to throw a 100 hour non-stop party during which they would all try to meet every promising visitor to the house. The rush was the room designated as a no freshman zone where pikans could go for a break or to visit the poor rush chair, who was quarantined there for the whole time so they could remain impartial at rush meetings. These days it's just a room.

The flower

A double with pretty flowers painted on the door.

The knot

This room is named after the image painted on its door. Everybody guesses that it's called "the sword" on their house tour. But no, apparently the really hard part of the door paint was the Celtic knot around the border. This double's got a big 'ol sleeping closet.

The rainbow

Used to have a big rainbow flag and a rainbow painted radiator. Now it's just an unassuming double.

The coke

This spacious double used to have a coke machine as a door, but the fire marshal didn't like that so much. Sometimes crazy people voluntarily triple in this room.

The closet

A small single. It has been used as a visitor/freshman bunkroom in the past.

The wood

This smaller double used to have ugly retro fake wood paneling. Then it had a mural of the woods. Now it's just yellow and red.

The purple trim

This double has purple trim.

The pirate ship

This large double used to be painted in many bright colors. Then it had a big ass projector and screen, and some took to calling it the screening room. Now it's called the pirate ship. Guess why.

The skylight

A smallish single originally named "the coffin" for the coffin-like cubby where residents often put their bed. Most of this room used to be wasted space under the roof. Then one day, a pikan who had scored low in the singles lottery asked the house if he were to create a new single, could he live in it? When they agreed, he knocked down the walls of a small third floor closet and recovered the lost space into a really cool room. More recently, a pikan installed a skylight during work week, and got everyone to call it "the skylight".

The compass

A medium-large double. Used to have a large compass mural on the ceiling, but we knocked out the ceiling and a couple walls to make it much bigger and brighter during a recent work week. Possible new name: hells angels.

The dragon

A single with a dragon mural. Yet another room expanded to include angular former lost space. A former resident decided to knock down the walls and expand it himself. Not always a great thing to start the week before the fire inspection...

The maze

Used to have a big maze mural, but it was obliterated in a major work week renovation, but the current residents are putting a new maze in. I guess we really are all closet conservatives after all...

The loeb

Named after Russian mathematician Nicolai Loebechevsky who, like this room, showed that one could throw out Euclid's parallel postulate and come up with a weird yet consistent form of geometry.

The loft

A very vertical single with a large, high, skylit loft.

 

 

The Coke machine

Used to be the door to the Coke. Now it serves as closet space for the closet.

The firepole

What multi-level deck system would be complete without a fire pole? CAUTION: Slippery when wet.

The treehouse

Connected to the porches with a retractable drawbridge, this cable-hung tree house allows its host to grow and sway in the breeze unconstrained. And you can even get wireless on it

The roofdeck

... and beyond the infinite ...