Stanford University student housing

Stanford University has always provided some on-campus housing for students and now makes on-campus student housing available to all undergraduates and many graduate students. Around 96% of undergraduates enrolled at the main campus live on campus (6,509) as do 64% of eligible graduate students (5,709) as of Autumn 2015. Student Housing at Stanford is part of Residential & Dining Enterprises.

Undergraduate housing is organized as being East Campus, West Campus, or the Row. East Campus has the complexes of Stern, Wilbur, and Gerhard Casper Quad and the standalone dormitories of Branner, Toyon, Mirrielees, and Crothers. West Campus has the complexes of Florence Moore Hall, Lagunita Court, and Governor's Corner and the standalone Roble Hall. The Row is on the south-east to south side of campus and consists of about 3 dozen houses housing between 25 and 60 students each. These include the 6 fraternity houses and 3 sorority houses (as of 2016/2017). Married (or officially partnered) undergraduates or those with children are housed with graduate students.

Graduate housing consists of Escondido Village, Rains Houses, Kennedy Graduate Residences, Munger Graduate Residences, GSB (Graduate School of Business) Residences on East Campus and the Lyman Graduate Residences on West Campus. Students with children live in family courtyards among the Escondido Village low-rises. Due to the difficulty of finding reasonably priced off-campus housing and shortage of on-campus housing, Stanford has also leased a large number of off-campus apartments and subleases them to graduate students. There are plans to build new buildings by Autumn 2019 in the Escondido Village area for a net gain of 2,000 places.

The architects of Stanford University originally proposed that student housing consist of cottages each housing 15 to 25 students with the cottages for the men to the south-east of the main quad of the university and for the women to the south-west. The founders, Leland and Jane Stanford, rejected the idea and decided that the recently built Hôtel Kursaal de la Maloja in Switzerland would be the model for the original men's dorm, Encina Hall, housing 300. Encina Hall proved problematic as a dorm and now houses administrative offices and the Political Science department. Encina Hall was built well to the east of the Main Quad while the first women's dorm, the original Roble Hall, was built well to the west of the Main Quad just before the university opened in 1891 (about a half a mile separated the two halls). The original Roble plans were shelved when it was realized that it could not be built before the university opened in 1891. Jane Stanford insisted that both men and women be admitted in the first class and so new plans were drawn up for a building using Ernest L. Ransome's reinforced concrete instead of sandstone and it was built in 97 days. Both original dorms were named in Spanish: Encina meaning Live Oak and Robles Blancho [sic] meaning White Oak according to Leland Stanford who decided on the names in 1891 (the latter name was presumably corrected and shortened to just Roble). The tradition of naming many student residences with Spanish names was established. The name, Roble Hall, was later moved to the current Roble Hall (built 1917) and the original building renamed Sequoia Hall, used as a men's dorm then the Statistics department, and eventually torn down in 1996.

...
Wikipedia