Recapturing the Mystique of B.U.'s "700"

Photo credit: Absolute Astronomy

It’s late August in Boston and there are signs of college kids coming back to town. Walking east on Comm. Avenue early yesterday morning, I had just left the gym when I spotted kids wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “Warren Towers 2009-2010.”

In an encounter that lasted just seconds, I had to tell them that I too had lived in Warren Towers, back in 1970. I assume the kids in the T-shirts were B.U. orientation leaders. No doubt they were amused to see this baby boomer – Clover brewed, Kona tall in one hand and a carton of Panera Bread bagels in the other – trying to tell them they shared something in common.

I entered B.U. as a transfer student, after determining that the odds of my finding a husband would be a lot more favorable than at the University of Pittsburgh, where it seemed that my male counterparts preferred football, beer, and fraternities to academics. Warren Towers, an 18 story dorm housing 1800 kids in three towers didn’t get its name until 1976. By that time I was happily married --with a home in nearby Brookline and a new baby named Daphne.

On the Labor Day weekend Dad drove me up to Boston in his Buick, and moved me into Warren Towers, it was simply called “700,” a reference to its location at 700 Comm. Avenue. Were it not for Wikipedia, I would have no idea that I had lived in the second biggest, non-military dorm in the country, bested only by the Jester Center at the University of Texas. I have not checked to see if there's a Facebook Group for this dorm. But given the fact that few of the women I knew in those years kept their maiden names, such a group might be useless.

Though our relationship was reasonably polite, my roommate and I had little in common. Paying for her education through a combination of work-study jobs and waitressing at the Blue Parrot in Cambridge, she came from Oswego, fancied herself a student radical, and loved going to demonstrations. With Grandma paying for my education, I felt an obligation to study hard and get good grades – at least when I wasn’t looking for a husband.

Next door to us were two gorgeous blonde, brown-eyed sisters from just outside New Haven, one of whom had a boyfriend. He sent her several pair of bikini underpants on Valentine’s Day in a year when I received not so much as a Valentine from Mom.

Also on our floor was a babe from Scarsdale named Barbara Bloom. With straight, shoulder length platinum blonde hair, dark fake eyelashes and a body to die for, she shared tales of dates with the brother of a Red Sox player, and dinners at Pier Four with her dad in town on business. She also recounted phone calls from her mom, wedded to the belief that if Barbara would just get married, any concerns about passing her courses would evaporate.

In that cast of unforgettable characters was also a girl from Flatbush named Allyn. With a Rubenesque build, magnificent red hair styled like that of Farrah Fawcett, and a mother who forever nagged her about losing weight, Allyn would tell anybody within hearing distance that she had “excellent proportions.” Clad in cashmere sweaters, gaucho pants and buttery soft leather boots, she whined that given her mom’s own weight problems, the nagging was unfair. “Yes, but I’m not looking for a husband” was her retort, at least according to Allyn.

If I had to guess, I’d say that the kids I saw yesterday with the Warren Towers T-shirts worry a lot more about figuring out how to pay for college than about finding spouses for life. But such was not the case for many of us in 1970.

The following September, I was thrilled to get a single at 700. I could look out the window in the morning and see the rowers on the Charles. At night I could see the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square. With a hot pink cotton pique bedspread, a clear, vinyl blowup throw pill with a hot pink and orange bulls eye, a poster with hot pink and orange balloons that said “May Beautiful Things Happen to You Today,” and a new stereo on which I loved playing Elton John’s “Your Song,” I was on top of the world.

Less than a month later, I met a psychiatrist at a mixer in Sargent Gym, and invited him to listen to music on my new stereo. By August we were married. The intervening years brought me grad school, a career in public relations, widowhood, remarriage to a lawyer named Dennis, and more recently Daphne’s own marriage.

Before the real estate market collapsed, I would read stories about colleges developing condos near campus for baby boomer alums hoping to recapture their youth. Though I will forever be seen as a New York transplant, staying in Boston after college continues to make me feel young – despite the amused looks on the faces of those kids from Warren Towers.

What are your own experiences at "700," Warren Towers or B.U.?

Warren Towers