Living in Style: Dorm Room Decor

Reading a recent article in the New York Times about students who spend $1,000 to decorate their dorm rooms, I was hit with a flood of memories about my own dorm room decorations. My late '80s college dorm room included old movie posters (James Dean stuck to the wall with that blue tacky stuff which made the poster corners smudgy and which actually did not come completely off the wall, despite what the packaging said); a boom box with many, many cassette tapes (Depeche Mode, Pyschedelic Furs); sheets and comforters in various shades of black and gray (I thought it was a sophisticated color scheme); and a mini-fridge (and I'm hoping that any fines for breaking expressly stated rules with this one are not retroactive). I wondered how many other students had decorated their rooms, and whether their rooms were as evocative of the times they lived in and the lives they led. Following is a look at dorm rooms at Vassar, and what they say about the students who lived in them.

This room reflects some of the direct effects the war had on dorm room interiors, and the creation of a casual, secondhand style that persists in dorm rooms today. The Vassar College catalog of 1943 noted that, because of labor shortages and rising costs, students performed housekeeping chores in the dorms. The result seems to have been lower standards of dorm room cleanliness. Apart from the general disorder, other elements of '40s style stand out: the hassocks, the novelty lampshades, and the splashy tropical print fabric, which matches the bedspreads. Other furniture dates from an earlier time, and was perhaps bought at the Furniture Exchange, a sort of tag sale held in the fall at the Student Center (now ACDC). The bedsteads, mirrors, chairs, and desks were supplied by the college (and look suspiciously like the furniture in my own dorm room 40 years later).

This room shows an early version of that famous student decorating technique "lots of stuff on the walls." The large number of photographs is testimony to the popularity of portrait photography at the turn of the century. Also evident here is the more informal snapshot, which became popular after George Eastman patented the first Kodak camera in 1888, allowing amateurs to record their experiences for posterity. The geometric shapes on the wall behind the daybed are baggage stickers from railway stations all around the world. These demonstrate two things: first, the Victorian penchant for collecting useless bits of paper (yes, this is when stamp collecting began), and second, the expansion of the travel industry during this period. Improved methods of transportation, such as fast, comfortable steamships and reliable European and American railway systems, meant that international travel was a possibility for a wider segment of the population. The growth of tourism led inevitably to the souvenir, which this student also had on her walls in the form of heads of royalty printed on handkerchiefs (and led eventually to the plastic Eiffel Tower, which I brought back with me from my junior year abroad to decorate my senior year room).

The Japanese poster on the wall is evidence of a fascination for all things Japanese in the United States and Europe, which began with the opening of the Japanese port in 1861 by Commodore Perry and which had aesthetic effects as far ranging as Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, Impressionist graphics, and Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. This student added a further note of exoticism with the pillows thrown on the other daybed to create a "Turkish cozy corner" (pretty much along the lines of the Indian bedspread that I bought my sophomore year in the very exotic College Center Bazaar).

By the 1940s, a number of 20th-century innovations appeared in dorm rooms. The portable typewriter was introduced in the early 1930s, and students took advantage of the lightweight design to type their papers — often sitting on the dorm room floor, which became the seating area of choice. The portable phonograph, introduced as early as 1921, was equally popular. A 1939 House & Gardens article noted: "Required for all college students seems to be the ability to discuss to exhaustion the subtle style differences between Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw." And of course Ritz crackers, brought onto the U.S. market in 1935, turned every gathering into a party.

This student demonstrates her knowledge of modern design with her Isamu Noguchi paper lampshade and up-to-date electric percolator. At the same time, much of her decorating scheme harkens back to the late 19th century: the art prints on the walls, the use of magazine covers as prints (a practice which began with Harper's Magazine covers in the 1890s by artists such as Charles Dana Gibson, who created the famous "Gibson Girl"), and the use of throw cushions on the bed.

This Vassar student presents a typical 1950s pose: on the phone with her feet in the air. Her room shows some of the social changes that had occurred in the first part of the 20th century for college women. Cigarettes and ashtrays were part of many dorm interiors by this time: the 1931 Vassarion shows photos of the senior smoking room, ostensibly for entertaining male guests, but evidently a social room for groups of young women as well. By the 1950s, the thoughtful hostess put out cigarettes for her guests (and the small container on the side table may be for this purpose). Alcohol had also become common in campus life, and the champagne bottles gave an air of sophistication to the decor. Note the interesting stickers on the window: a late 19th-century trade card for cookies (reminiscent of the 1900 baggage sticker collector) and MAD magazine's Alfred E. Neuman — "What, Me Worry?"

These rooms demonstrate one of the biggest changes to dorm room interiors in the past 10 years: computer technology. Replacing the typewriter, the radio, the stereo, and in many cases, notebooks and pens, the computer is now the central focus of the room (though it is interesting to note that the desks are still in the same 1940s design, which makes no accommodation for keyboards). Technology is also evident in the Aeron-style desk chairs, whose complex adjustment mechanisms and elegant ergonomic forms were designed with the aid of computers. Co-existing with technological sophistication, we can still see some dorm room staples: the steamer trunk, the Van Gogh print, and the Oreo cookies. Photographs and travel souvenirs, the beer coaster and shot glasses, 1940s style desk lamp and the turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau print: who knows if these current students realize how much of their decor appeared in Vassar dorm rooms 50, 75, even 100 years ago? These rooms show us that, while times, styles, and campus life have changed, dorm room interiors have their own traditions that persist through the years.

Dorm room interiors offer a wealth of information about student life at Vassar throughout its history. Unfortunately, Special Collections' photos of interiors are scarce after the 1960s (and, for some reason, between 1910 and 1939). The author is interested in further researching this topic for a longer scholarly piece. A few alumnae/i have already responded to an earlier request for photos and stories of their dorm room decor; if you have any you would like to share, please contact the Vassar Quarterly.

Photo credit: Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries; Helanna Bratman