Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: At work we have graduation for our interns and residents at the end of the month, but I think folks have already mostly packed up their kids at school and have started the summer. I have vague memories of each of my dorm rooms although I never went in for decorating them much. (Yes, given my post-college attachment to stuff that seems surprising, yes?) As I remember the dorm rooms were designed to be impervious to hanging things on the wall. Early on I attempted a poster or two which promptly peeled from the wall and I gave up. I was an art major however so it isn’t like there was stuff around.

Two out of the three dorm rooms I had in college (one year I lived in London) were in the original or at least early buildings of the college. Connecticut College has these beautiful, old stone buildings and at least one of my rooms had original leaded glass windowpanes – I was on the ground floor and folks would occasionally take a short cut in via the window. I don’t pine for my college experience a lot, but this photograph does make me think about it. I always enjoyed the history of the college when I was there. It had been more than a decade co-ed at that point, but the ghosts of industrious, smart women past always seemed to lurk pleasantly around.

I had a hot pot but wasn’t one of those people driven to attempt to cook a lot in my dorm room. I had a dark pink comforter on the bed (it came to NYC with me and stayed with me until it was in shreds a number of years later) and not much else in the line of decor. I have two coffee mugs from those days and quite unconsciously I happen to be drinking from one right now, also a dark pink. The other is a heavy old fashioned white stoneware one that I nicked from the dining hall. (Kim was just drinking out of it the other day and complaining that it doesn’t hold enough coffee which is a fair criticism.)

I purchased this photocard from a woman who said she collected this very thing (early dorm room photos) and if she was letting this one go, I do wonder what her collection looks like! It is an interesting genre – clearly the urge to document an early experiment of living on your own as a young person was strong. There is nothing that dates this postcard – it was never used so no postmark. It could in fact easily be Connecticut College, which was founded as a women’s only college in 1911.

A careful look quickly reveals that this is a woman’s room, purse hanging from the chair was the first clue, although it is overall quite feminine really – the chafing dish (the early 20th century equivalent of a hot pot – kids probably are allowed microwaves now!) which sits nicely on a side table complete with a flower cloth is another significant indicator. The carpet is flowered as well, and the dresser has a lacey doily. It is covered with photographs, as are the shelves above and we can even see a few more in the mirror.

Pennants hang all over – one in the mirror says Amsterdam, but the others are for schools or places I don’t recognize and since I can’t have both a mirror and magnifier I have trouble reading. A pincushion, a calendar (which I cannot read the year or the month on) and a few other baubles decorate the walls and an envelope is also pinned to the board next to the calendar on a sort of pinboard there.

There are two chairs and I wonder if this room was shared and we are only being shown one person’s half. At Connecticut College the majority of the original dorms has single rooms with only a few suites of shared rooms. (Newer dorms introduced in the 1960’s had more double rooms.) However, this could also be a guest chair.

The seller had several other versions of dorm photos for sale (presumably rejects from her collection) – all great although the others appeared to all be men’s dorms, often with them in the photo. I would have purchased more, but they were relatively expensive and I was already loaded up with cat cards. I assume, as there were fewer woman’s colleges, that there are fewer photos of their rooms so I like that aspect of this one. You get the feeling that it was a moment when after much hard work it was just right and she had to take a picture.