In Bentley’s first decade, rented rooms in Boston and Brookline were home for the very few students who did not commute to classes by rail. Their weekly $8 to $12 covered two hot meals per day and laundry services.
By the 1930s, Harry Bentley felt compelled to write Rules for Conduct in Student Homes. He advocated for acting “in a manner consistent with the dignity of a professional student.” There were stern warnings against boisterousness and “wisecracking.”
Rented dormitories in the Back Bay housed men-only in 1959. Female students shared apartments or lived in dorms at a now-defunct junior college.
The first student residence that Bentley purchased, from Emerson College in 1960, was located at 373 Commonwealth Ave. Its 135 male residents came under the watchful eye of a live-in director and dietician.
Initial plans for the Waltham campus called for the Tree Dorms to circle the pond on Forest Street; the building site was moved in part so neighbors could continue to see and access the pond.
Students of the early 1970s staged protests, including a sit-in, to remove prohibitions against male and female students gathering in each other’s dorm rooms.
Orchard North and South were the first dorms built on south campus, and the reason for our pedestrian bridge across Beaver Street. Red Sox legend Jim Rice was on hand for the ribbon cutting at Bentley’s newest residence, Fenway Hall, in 2004.