Brunswick Ends Career as Married Vets' Dorm

Home for married veteran students during the last two years, the Hotel Brunswick in the Back Bay will lose its dormitory status June 30.

Vice-President Reynolds announced yesterday that the University will terminate its contract because of the decrease in occupancy and the rise in costs.

Run at a loss since the fall of 1946 as a service to ex-GI's and their wives, the Brunswick was revamped by the University at an outlay of $25,000.

Originally accommodating 115 couples in 115 suites with two rooms and a bath at rents ranging from $25 to $80, the hotel now has only 59 couples.

Dinner and breakfast in the basement cost each couple $17.50 a week. Also in the basement is a set of automatic laundries.

Although housing for student families is still hard to find, Reynolds said that the Brunswick had proved unsuitable for many of the student families still seeking living quarters. The lack of cooking facilities in the rooms has eliminated couples with children.

Several of the families now living in the hotel will graduate in June, leading Reynolds to hope that sub-rentals in Cambridge will be sufficient to accommodate any couples who will be left homeless this summer.

Other families will have to try to find rooms with the assistance of the Cambridge office of the real estate firm of Hunneman and Company and of the Phillips Brooks House room registry.

The Brunswick Hotel was one of several housing projects provided by the University at the end of the war to help house the large number of married veterans then entering college.

During the war the hotel served as a Coast Guard barracks, forcing the University to redecorate the walls, the marble-floored hallways, and the high-collinged bedrooms with their walnut and brick fireplaces, and to install new wiring, plumbing, windows and doors, and an improved heating system.

Constructed in 1874 at Boylston Street and Copley Square at a cost of one million dollars, the Brunswick advertised itself in 1880 as catering to "influential persons of taste."