On November 9, 1874, Sigma Kappa was founded by five young women, the only females enrolled at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. They received a letter from the faculty approving the organization’s petition, which included a constitution and bylaws.
The five founders of Sigma Kappa are Mary Low Carver, Elizabeth Gorham Hoag, Ida Fuller Pierce, Louise Helen Coburn and Frances Mann Hall. In Sigma Kappa’s first constitution, chapter membership was limited to 25 women. The original chapter is known as the Alpha chapter. After Alpha chapter’s membership reached 25, a Beta chapter was formed. A Gamma chapter soon followed. Although there were some early joint meetings, the members did not think it feasible to continue that way. In 1893, a vote was taken to limit Alpha chapter to 25 members and to allow no more initiations into Beta and Gamma chapters. In due time, Beta and Gamma were no more.
The Delta chapter was installed at Boston University in 1904. In 1905, Sigma Kappa became a member of the National Panhellenic Conference. Sigma Kappa’s Alpha chapter closed in 1984 when Colby College banned all fraternities and sororities from campus.
I was intrigued by a picture of the Sigma Kappa lodge in an early edition of The Triangle. It belonged to Mu Chapter at the University of Washington. The chapter was founded on April 30, 1910. A local group, the Altheims was formed in 1909 by two Sigma Kappas. One was an alumna from the Alpha Chapter and the other was a transfer from the University of Illinois chapter.
Dorothy Louise Anderson was an early member of the chapter. She was at the University but one year, on account of illness. She died on March 5, 1912.
Dorothy Louise Anderson
Her parents, Ada Woodruff and Oliver Perkins Anderson, gave a lodge to the chapter. Mrs. Anderson was a novelist and Mr. Anderson was a Seattle entrepreneur who made maps, blueprints and turned an interest in photography into a business. He even named a lake for Dorothy while making surveys and maps of the Seattle area. During Dorothy’s life and well afterwards, the Andersons supported the chapter, hosting events and showering the chapter with gifts.
The Sigma Kappa Lodge was a “rustic lodge on an island on Puget Sound,” near Crystal Springs, “where the Sigma girls can spend week-end, summer vacations, and give some very unusual and jolly rushing parties.” The Andersons provided the chapter with two canoes aptly named Sigma and Kappa. The lodge had a “large comfortable living room with a large fireplace and French windows, a large bedroom and a sleeping porch, a kitchen and bathroom.”
A non-profit organization, the Puget Sound Association of Sigma Kappa Sorority, was organized in April 1914 to own the property. The Andersons also began the “building fund by the gift of two lots in West Seattle.”
The dedication ceremony for the lodge took place on May 17, 1914. A report in the 1920 Triangle provided this information:
Annually we give a big lodge picnic, the only time men may invade our domain. It is the custom of the seniors to give themselves a farewell party at the lodge. We feel that Mr. and Mrs. Anderson have, as in no other way possible, kept alive and green Dorothy’s memory, and have found the ideal way to expressing the Sigma spirit of service that was Dorothy.
In 2020, it’s a risk management nightmare to think of a chapter owning a summer/vacation property miles from campus. I don’t know when the Puget Sound Association of Sigma Kappa divested itself of the lodge. However, in 1919, a 14-room house at 4732 21st Avenue NE became the chapter’s home. It was soon outgrown and property at 4510 22nd NE was purchased in 1926 for the building a new chapter house. A groundbreaking ceremony took place in April 1930 and the chapter moved into it in 1930. The chapter is still in the house 90 years later, although the house was expanded and renovated throughout the years. And I wonder if that bronze table which was over the fireplace in the Sigma Kappa Lodge still exists.
Update 11/11/2020 from an advisor to the chapter:
Thanks for featuring Dorothy and the Sigma Kappa Lodge! Unfortunately, no, we don’t have the old plaque that was above the fireplace anymore. The lodge ended around 1931, when Dorothy’s parents sold their property the lodge was on, and ΣΚ agreed to let it go. In return, the Andersons donated a new library to the chapter in 1935, and the chapter still has all the books from that era, which include a nameplate remembering Dorothy, so her legacy lives on at the Mu chapter house!
The lodge’s guestbook. A Pi Phi, Olive Cline, was a guest. She was an alumna of the Butler College chapter.
These wonderful pictures of chapter members at the lodge on Bainbridge Island are also in the chapter’s possession.
