Dormitory life in the '40s
 

The building was surrounded by locust trees, which the hurricane exposed as fragile.
Other trees of interest to us kids were the tulip and black walnut trees which grew near the dormitory. The leaves when gathered together made defensive forts, and the fruits were used as missiles.
There was, I seem to remember, a solitary but climbable gingko tree.
The lawn itself provided an open space for the square-dancing as described by others .
At ground level the cook and janitor lived. The communal dining-room was to the right side (west) It was worthwhile being on good terms with the cook, in case one had something special to cook such as the result of a successful fishing foray. There were flounders, snappers and on one occasion an eel which was hooked near the power-house. Sunday was their day off, which meant that the pantry was unlocked and we fed ourselves.
The cook/janitor couples changed several times. I remember Mr Morgan with his collection of musical instruments. His banjo was impressively heavy. He said that this was thanks to the large amount of gold in its structure. I was gullible enough to believe this- or maybe it was true?
Of other residents of the building I have little recollection. They came for the summer, then left .There was one man upstairs who set up a photo studio in his room. Another was a young woman who had an alarming diabetic episode one morning when everyone else had gone out . I was faced with having to give her sugar.

My mother, E.R.Sansome ( “Chat” to her friends) and I started off living
upstairs in the Dormitory and later moved downstairs. This move is relevant because it brought us into close neighbourhood with Barbara McLintock. The relationship was cordial - until she noticed that I had brought home a bird-cage from the school woodwork class. She did not want anything noisy next door.
Meanwhile, Dr Hollander had produced an incubator- hatched dove which was to occupy the cage. I resigned myself to tucking the cage away outside somewhere - the icehouse perhaps- but my mother colluded in the smuggling of the bird and cage into our room.
All went well and the dove remained admirably taciturn-- for a while. Inevitably, though, the dove grew up and the dawn was greeted with an increasingly confident voice. Sadly the dove had to go.
Subsequently a variety of creatures were kept in the room. There were box-turtles, a “chameleon” which came from a visit to the circus and grew fat on the ready supply of fruit-flies. There were caterpillars of several sorts. The one thing that they all had in common was that they were silent.
The best caterpillars were to be found by looking for droppings under hickory trees and then looking upwards to see where they were coming from. The Hickory Horned Devil was particularly splendid and fearsome.
Ten years ago I brought my wife to see the place. I was glad to see it hadn’t changed much.