Cigarette smoke in the air, student servers in white suits, and traditional wooden chairs around circular tables: such was a common scene in the early days of Paresky Commons. However, spurred by renovations and social changes, the Paresky that the Andover community knows today is far from this antique version, both in dining culture and decorations.
Since replacing Bulfinch Hall, also known as “The Beanery,” in September of 1930, Paresky Commons has seen several changes throughout the decades. In 2008, Louis P. Dolbeare ’36 described the original layout of the building in his memoir “Waiting on Eight Gaping Maws” and wrote about his work as a server.
“The four dining halls were identical in architecture, furnishing, and decoration: a sea of heavy oak tables seating eight students in rush-seated oak chairs. The walls and the embrasures of the tall, arched windows were paneled in dark oak… An undecorative feature on the coved plaster ceilings 15 feet above the noisy diners was the random splattering of many butter stains. These originated from the knife-flipping of butter pats by students,” wrote Dolbeare.
He continued, “My own case was that I was a waiter for two of my three years. Waiting on tables was the largest contribution to reducing the gap between total tuition and my scholarship… Being a waiter — serving 20 times a week in return for your 20 meals — was a financial lifesaver for scholarship boys and their families… I felt that being selected to serve the comparatively fancy meal, ‘with all the fixings’ (even white table cloths, candles and flowers) was great. I got a meal a cut or two above the usual and the quietly preening knowledge that the staff, if not my peers, thought my conventional serving technique was acceptable for these special occasions.”
Along with the disappearance of student servers, seating traditions have changed as well. According to Lucy Schulte Danziger ’78, a previous member of the board of Trustees, dining rooms were separated by social groups during her time at Andover.
“The four main dining rooms each had personalities that were overly simplistic and students self-selected the room they felt most comfortable in… If you self identified as a jock, you ate in Lower Right, as a creative type, Upper Left, as a none-of-the-above, you ate in Lower Left. And to stay out of view you could eat at Upper Right and avoid everyone you knew. I have no idea where these designations or identifications came from… It seemed silly to me at the time that you had to choose one aspect of your identity to eat in a dining room,” said Schulte Danziger.
Reflecting on Paresky’s current seating tradition, Tasha Bohorad ’26 noted how the dining sections are now primarily divided by the grades of students.
“The big tables in Lower Right definitely are good for teams or big friend groups. Lower Left is a space where you can get work done, or meet with teachers or have meetings. The upper levels are good because it does separate a lot of underclassmen, but they’re not in a space where you have to sit with people you don’t know. Lower Right is very stigmatized for no reason,” said Bohorad.
Paresky’s most recent renovation took place in 2007, during which students ate in the Smith ice rink, dubbed “Uncommons.” Keith Robinson ’84, Chair of Biology and one of the members of the committee that renovated Paresky, highlighted student input’s impact on the changes.
“When we did the renovation, there were a lot of surveys that went out to the community. One of the things that resoundingly came back was no one wanted the stairs touched. Everybody liked the divots in the stairs and the feeling of walking in the footsteps of where everyone else had before you since the 1930s. The other was the dining halls. Everyone liked them, and they were nice and beautiful, and so basically they’re still the same. If someone from my class comes back and walks in here for the first time ever the dining halls look almost identical. That tradition of it would make it hard for me to imagine us redoing it in a radically different way,” said Robinson.
Countless classes of Andover students have had some experience of eating at Paresky — renovations have never taken longer than four years. Paul Murphy ’84, Instructor in Math, spoke on the significance of the history that current Andover students share with generations of alumni.
“It’s the center of the world. Really everyone goes [there]. For almost a hundred years, this is the only dining hall that every graduate of Andover has ever experienced, so there isn’t anyone alive that went to Andover that doesn’t remember [Paresky] Commons, which is really cool. We’ve had presidents, we’ve had major actresses and actors, we’ve had major social activists walk on the stairs that you guys walk every day. I love that,” said Murphy.
