The apartment building was half gone at 1:59pm.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

The first new fraternity house to be built at UVA in over 50 years got a big pre-groundbreaking ceremony of sorts Tuesday— as heavy machinery minced a 1950’s era apartment building near UVA’s famed Mad Bowl grassy field.

“It’s coming down good,” says Ralph Law, the site superintendent for Parham Construction, as the crew took a break after a hydraulic hose burst Tuesday afternoon.

Delta Upsilon, now located adjacent to Beta Bridge, will build a new building on the site, a red-brick, neoclassical structure of 6,825 square feet— complete with a two-story classical portico featuring large white doric columns.

Inside, over three floors including an English basement, the architectural firm of Daggett & Grigg has designed the men of DU with 15 single bedrooms (including two that are handicap-accessible) and several large common areas. The building will not only get wired for cable and Internet and centrally air-conditioned, but it will also be safety equipped with sprinklers.

Delta Upsilon is the nation’s sixth oldest fraternity, according to a release, and its Virginia Chapter was founded April 8, 1922, the first DU chapter south of the Mason-Dixon line.

For DU, whose national organization is celebrating its 175th anniversary, the new house a fresh place after 35 years standing guard next door to Beta Bridge on Rugby Road. And appropriately enough, the fraternity that gave its name to the Bridge is coming back home.

After selling its historic location on Rugby to DU in the early 1970s and spending many years at what was originally called the Compton House on Maury Avenue (a building later razed to great community upset by the Jefferson Scholars Foundation), Beta Theta Pi— best known simply as “Beta”— will have a rebirth next to the famous paint-covered bridge.

The under-demolition structure was a 12-unit 4,980 square-foot at 135 Madison Lane. Wooglin Company bought the parcel for $695,000 on October 1, 2008. The assessment was $103,000 land $378,000 improvements for $481,000 total.

“By tomorrow,” says Parham’s Law, “we should have the majority of it out of here.”