Delta Upsilon’s house at 407 E. Rosemary Street was built in the 1920s as a private residence.  In early 1956, DU purchased it from Mrs. Bain, thus it came to be called the Bain House.  At that time, the house was being rented by the ADPi’s while their house was under renovation.  In September of 1956, the first DUs took up residence in the house.  Over the ensuing 40+ years, nearly 1,200 men used the house, many of them actually living there and calling it home.  The years were tough on the old structure and in the late 1990s, it started to be very expensive to maintain.  The floor joists were rotting and the exterior was being held on by 50 year’s worth of pledge-applied coats of paint!

On Mother’s Day 1996, a tragic fire at the Phi Gamma Delta house took the lives of five students.  Shortly thereafter, the Town of Chapel Hill passed an ordinance requiring all Greek houses to be fully sprinklered and fire alarmed by the fall of 2001.  At that time, Mark Prakke ’87, Mike Hoffer ’81, and Jeff Manning ’86 were (and still are) the officers of the NC Delta Upsilon Foundation and had been struggling to keep the house in decent repair and a safe place to live.  A small group of local alumni, who, until that time had not been active in fraternity affairs, contacted the  officers and got together to determine a course of action regarding the Town’s mandate.  Several members of the group had experience in the construction trades and they determined that it would cost at least $100,000 to install a sprinkler system in the two houses.  We felt that it would be unwise and fiscally irresponsible to put that kind of money into a worn out structure, so the “Steering Committee” began looking at other alternatives.  We considered renovating the house, but there were major structural problems with it that made that option too expensive.  We considered selling the entire property and moving elsewhere, but we all felt a very strong attachment to 407 E. Rosemary; it is simply THE BEST place in Chapel Hill for a fraternity house and we were unwilling to give it up.  Thus, we settled on tearing down the old house and building a new one.

In early 2001, we contracted with CRG Group, a local consulting firm that specializes in conducting fund-raising campaigns for Greek organizations, to conduct a capital campaign for us.  CRG, using information from UNC and from DUI (Delta Upsilon International) compiled a mailing list of all alumni.  They produced a multi-page color brochure and sent it to every DU alumnus, along with a request for a donation.  Alumni volunteers followed up the mailing with personal phone calls.  Two hundred and thirty eight alumni responded and pledged over $670,000 for the project. 

At the same time as the capital campaign was going on, we contracted with Brother John Ramsay ‘70, of Ramsay GMK Architects, to design a new house.  John had done a number of sorority renovations in Chapel Hill, as well as designed several local churches and other structures.  He also had a great deal of experience in dealing with the Town of Chapel Hill, which turned out to be vital to us.  We asked John to design a house of fourteen two-man rooms, kitchen, dining room, party room, etc.  The resulting structure was certainly beautiful, but the cost was $1.8 million, which was far more than we could afford.  Thus, we decided to scale back the size of the house to five two-man bedrooms.  This is more in keeping with the “lodge-style” fraternity housing that has been successful for years at such colleges as Princeton, Vanderbilt, Davidson, and many others.  The cost of this structure, including furnishings was $948,000.  The front appearance of the house is almost identical to the original, with the white siding, tall columns, and French doors.  This identical appearance was something our survey of alumni showed to be of vital importance.

Although the fund raising was quite successful, we realized that we would not be able to rebuild based upon alumni donations alone.  Therefore, we decided to sell the Dey House.  This decision was based upon not only the need for money, but also on the condition of the house and the cost to renovate it to livable condition.  In 2003, we sold it to Brother Francis Henry ’67.  Francis is now the owner of the Rathskeller and several other local businesses and plans to build a new home on the property for his residence.

In addition to cash donations and proceeds from the Dey House sale, we realized that we obtained a construction loan and mortgage from Harrington Bank, a local institution owned by several UNC professors and local investors. 
With the demise of the physical house, so too did the membership decline.  By Town ordinance, we had to close the house in fall 2001.  Without a physical house as a focal point of the fraternity, many brothers went inactive, no new pledges were recruited, and in 2003 we graduated our last active brother.  In fall of 2004, when it became evident that we would be building a new house, DU’ international headquarters sent a recruiter on campus to recolonize the fraternity.  He pledged ten freshmen and sophomores who eagerly set about to rebuild Delta Upsilon.

In April 2005, we broke ground on a new house and on November 19, 2005 it was dedicated by over 250 alumni who returned for this special occasion.