Christians Have Taken Over U-M's Gothic Frat House
DKE's former haunted mansion had trap doors and pulleys for initiation rituals but now serves as a sacred space
Ann Arbor — For years, walking down East William Street in downtown Ann Arbor, you’d be met with a curious sight. Right off campus, a haunted mansion, a steep-roofed brick building where no one ever seemed to come in or out. Fraternity letters carved over the doorway added to the mystique, implying a history of secret rites now forgotten.
The DKE Shant, as the building is known, sat dormant for years—now it’s a Christian study center, with students coming to and fro every day.
The Shant was built in 1878 as a meeting house for U-M’s chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon, a fraternity founded at Yale in 1844. It was designed by William Le Baron Jenney, a famed Chicago architect known for later designing the world’s first skyscraper.
DKE is known as one of the oldest, most historic fraternities in the country. It counts six former presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, and both Bushes among its members. Ford himself was a member of the U-M chapter, even publicly visiting the Shant as Vice President in 1974.
The building is a magnificent piece of 19th century gothic brickwork. Taller than it is wide, with intricate detailing and a thick brick fence around it. Compared with the modern buildings around it, the sheer aura of the structure carries enormous weight.
It seems more like the chapel of a secretive cult than a frat house, and that’s by design. Fraternities in the 1800s originated more as secret societies, obsessed with esoteric rites and rituals, than the party-obsessed fraternities of today.
The DKE Shant was used for nearly a century by U-M’s DKE Omicron chapter to hold their regular meetings, conduct their secret initiation rites for new pledges, and even carry out hazing rituals.
Reportedly, the building originally had an elaborate series of trapdoors and hidden pulley systems. There was even a hidden rope device that could suddenly hoist an unsuspecting pledge up through the ceiling to the second floor, right into the fraternity president’s office.
When the fraternity’s main chapter house burned down in 1968, the chapter fell into disarray and ownership of the DKE Shant passed over to a holding company. By the time the chapter reorganized in 1977, they began renting out the Shant as an event space, hosting events for up to 140 people.
This marked the decline in the Shant’s use as a space for fraternity rituals. By the 2010s, the building seemed essentially dormant and vacant. It stood there ominously just off campus, spookier than ever, with no lights ever seen inside, and no one ever coming or going.
In 2018, DKE sold off the property. It was purchased by a local church, which used it as a worship space for a few years before selling it to the Michigan Christian Study Center, now housed inside the premises.
Always curious about this strange building, I was shocked to see students coming and going from it on a Saturday afternoon. I took a step inside and saw them gathered around on the first floor in a newly remodeled kitchen and lounge space, enjoying coffee and pastries.
An employee of the center greeted me immediately and, after explaining my interest in the building, took me around for a brief tour.
The interior, for the most part, has been remodeled over the years. The first time, shortly before the local DKE chapter’s reorganization in the 1970s. Supposedly, they removed all the trap doors and hidden chambers. The second time, evidently, in more recent years by the church, and now the center, as the building has shifted in use.
The first floor is fairly bright and modern, with new white walls and cabinetry. The basement, likewise, is now more modern and functional. There’s even an elevator, surely a new accoutrement.
The second floor, however, has retained most of its former architectural glory. Bright stained glass windows cover the high walls, the vaulted ceiling still held up by ornately carved dark woodwork. A vaulted skylight gives a sense of airiness to the space, clearly designed as a ceremonial chamber more than a simple meeting hall. It’s a truly beautiful space.
Much of the original atmosphere and detailing is gone, and likely has been for many years. According to legend, the space was originally wallpapered in red velvet silk, and festooned with hand-carved wood furniture, including a ceremonial throne for each member of the fraternity.
Like the fraternity chapter itself, and the entirety of the American fraternity system, the space clearly declined over a period of many years. The bones remained, only to be sold off, and now reborn as something entirely new.
It’s a fitting building for a Christian study center, still very much retaining the feeling of a sacred space about it. It’s nice to see students using the space, gathering together, studying quietly in the vaulted chapel on the second floor. It feels like a building that was shrouded in darkness and decay emerged into something new and light.
More often now, you see the opposite. Former sacred spaces turned into secular businesses. Churches turned into breweries and apartment buildings, and the like. There’s always a feeling of strangeness to that, as if something more profound was lost.
There’s still a strange feeling to the DKE Shant, as well, despite all the remodeling. Perhaps it’s the gothic stylism, or the DKE letters still carved above the front door, and on the stained glass windows. Perhaps it’s the imbued resonance of a century of strange, secret rituals, unknown except to their participants.
If it were now a brewery, I’d worry that the beer was haunted. Christians don’t have to worry about that, though, undoubtedly spiritually protected against any hexes left by errant frat boys. The perfect occupants, in a way, to move on from the haunted mansion years and reform the aura of the DKE Shant into something lively and present for the student community.
