RIDGEWAY HOUSE

This house, located at 128 Lynn Avenue, was apparently rented in 1938 when, on September 17 the Iowa State Daily Student states that “the Gladstone Hotel has been converted into a supervised women’s dormitory and renamed Ridgeway Hall.”

The College purchased the building (and site) in July 1941.¹ On September 23 of that year the student paper reported:

A nameless dormitory, which has been in turn, a fraternity, a hotel, a rooming house, and a temporary shelter for a burned-out fraternity, will house 29 Iowa State women this fall. The most common name for the edifice is Gladstone Hotel, but it will have a new name when the women move in, for theirs is the task of choosing a name… the building was completely redecorated, inside and out…

Schilletter tells that the name Ridgeway was the choice of the new occupants.² In 1942 it housed men, but in 1943 again became a women’s residence.

The house was rented to Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority from 1946-50. Later it housed graduate men students.

Ridgeway House was sold, on a bid basis, to St. Thomas Aquinas Church in 1958. ³