Pi Kappa Alpha's Myths and Legends

Founders Memorial Hall

Alpha Chapter, University of Virginia

April 16th, 1913 9:30 p.m. This was it – what they had been working towards for the last four years. This was their opportunity to see their plans through to fruition. How would he face the chapter if he did not succeed? Now was not the time to think about that.

Samuel Bitting (Virginia, Alpha 1910)mopped his brow, took a seat at his delegate desk, and looked around the crowded hall. The grand meeting room in the Phoenix Hotel in Lexington was barely large enough for the group. Some 34 delegates, and at least three times as many attendees and alumni, were all eagerly awaiting the beginning of the 1913 Lexington Convention legislative session.

Four years prior, at the 1909 convention, Alpha Chapter had been in this same position. Alpha and Upsilon Chapter (Auburn) had both petitioned for loans from the chapter house fund. In a display of true brotherhood, the Alpha representative had made a motion for the loan to go to Upsilon Chapter instead of his own alma mater. Samuel hoped it would be Alpha’s turn this time around.

In the 1913 April edition of the Shield & Diamond, Robert Massie, an 1883 initiate of Alpha, conveyed to the Fraternity how life had changed at the University of Virginia, and how that change required a chapter house if Alpha Chapter was to remain competitive. As a matter of fact, out of the 10 articles in that issue of the Shield & Diamond, only two touched on topics other than the need to support Alpha in its request for funds.

In support of the idea, the Grand Old Man of the Fraternity, Robert Adger Smythe, said that “Alpha Chapter should always have a warm place in the heart of every member and of every other chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha. She is inseparably associated with the beginning and the progress of the Fraternity”.

When it was finally Brother Bitting’s turn to have the floor at the Convention, he took a minute to collect his thoughts, stood up, and delivered Alpha’s plan. In return for a $5,000 loan, Alpha proposed that the house would become a “Memorial to the Founders of the Fraternity”. This memorial was expected to cost around $15,000 ($331,500 in modern terms), and was to be placed on one of the lots newly released by UVA, right on the grounds. The $5,000 would be added to the funds already raised by the chapter and its alumni, with the remainder to be financed through issuing $25 bonds to Pike members at 5% interest.

On the first floor of the chapter house, in the grandiose main hall, there would be placed a bronze plaque commemorating the great men the structure was meant to honor. In addition, there was to be a room “kept always ready for instant occupancy by visiting brothers, and never occupied by resident members of Alpha Chapter.”

Bitting graduated in June of 1915, shortly before the Memorial was completed. But it is easy to imagine him standing at its dedication later that summer, reveling in Alpha’s success. As had been promised, the structure was named “Founders Memorial Hall”. In an excerpt from the December 1915 Shield & Diamond, the hall was described thus:

“The Hall is a large building of the colonial type, and contains fifteen spacious bedrooms. On the ground floor there is a comfortable entertainment room, and of course the usual furnace fixtures. The main or first floor proper contains two large living-rooms, a billiard room, and two guest rooms. On the second floor are most of the bedrooms, which are supplemented by modern bathrooms. On the third floor is the chapter room and two more bedrooms. As for its real purpose, it was meant to perpetuate the memory of the fathers of the Fraternity, and to serve as a common meeting place for all the brothers whenever it is practicable for them to gather within its four walls.”

Since 1915, when the Founders Memorial Hall was finished, it has been the home of our Alpha Chapter, and a source of pride for PiKA. Over the years the Hall has undergone some changes. But regardless of any physical alterations, its main purpose still stands today as it did some 95 years ago – as a monument to our founders.

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Do you have a story about one of Pi Kappa Alpha’s chapter houses that you’d like to share? If so, please contact Director of Real Estate Nat Steinhoff at nsteinhoff@pikes.org, or 901-748-1868 ext. 123.