Stanford University student housing
Since the founding, Stanford University has provided on-campus housing for students. Today, all undergraduate students, most graduate students, and many graduate employees use campus housing. While not all graduate students are eligible for campus or subsidized off-campus housing, of those that are, only 64% are able to take advantage of this opportunity due to the limited housing stock. Student Housing at Stanford is currently part of Residential & Dining Enterprises, an in-house standalone vendor within the Stanford affiliated network of businesses.
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. Married 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 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. By 2020/2021 new buildings in the Escondido Village area will have been constructed for a net gain of 2,000 beds.
History
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. 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 meaning White Oak according to Leland Stanford who decided on the names in 1891. The tradition of naming many student residences with Spanish names was established. The name, Roble Hall, was later moved to the current Roble Hall and the original building renamed Sequoia Hall, used as a men's dorm then the Statistics department, and eventually torn down in 1996.East side Branner and Toyon Halls were built in the 1920s for men and west side Lagunita Court was built in the 1930s in part to house the growing number of women after the hard cap of 500 women students was partially lifted. East side Stern and Wilbur halls were built in the 1940s again to house men and west side Florence Moore Hall in 1956 for women. The later 1960s and early 1970s saw all the residence halls become co-ed.
One sign of Stanford's success in building on-campus student housing by the mid-1950s is that by the fall of 1954, 36.0% of Stanford students were housed in university-operated residence halls, while the equivalent number at archrival UC Berkeley was 4.8%. Stanford then paused its construction program and no new halls were built for several decades, though the Manzanita trailer park was set up in 1969 to provide temporary housing. In the early 1980s, west side Sterling Quad was built and in the early 1990s east side Kimball, Castaño, and Lantana Halls were built on what had been the trailer park. In 2015 the new Ng House was opened and in 2016 the Manzanita Park complex was renamed Gerhard Casper Quad.
In addition to the residence halls, there are also the Row Houses for undergraduates; many were originally fraternity or sorority houses though only 9 of the current 35 are now occupied by Greek organizations.
Graduate student residence halls were built in the 1950s for male law students and engineers respectively. Most graduate housing consists of apartment complexes such as Lyman, opened in 1997, Munger, Rains, and GSB. Beginning in the 1950s are the multitude of apartment buildings in Escondido Village which has many townhouses, known as "low-rises", where students with children can live and an elementary school, Escondido School which is part of the Palo Alto Unified School District.
A legacy issue with the pre-1978 construction is the widespread presence of exceptionally hazardous toxins in the building materials. Much of the housing stock retains lead paint and asbestos insulation. As the old housing stock is demolished and rebuilt, these toxins at time are released through carelessness into toxic dust clouds.
Shuttle service
Marguerite is the free shuttle service Stanford University offers to its students, faculty, staff, and the general public to get around campus or from campus to some off-campus locations such as the San Antonio Shopping Center, VA Palo Alto Hospital, Stanford Linear Accelerator, Stanford Shopping Center, or the Palo Alto Transit Center. It started small in 1976 with the intent of cutting car traffic on campus; parking fees were started at the same time. In 1989 the university wanted to expand but had to agree not to increase automobile traffic on campus at all to get planning permission from the county; among other methods it expanded the shuttle from commute hours only to all-day and increased the number of routes. In the next 10 years ridership went from 700/day to 3,500/day. In 2005 the number had risen to 4,800/day. By 2013 the estimated number of passengers was 2.3 million/year. Marguerite has also acquired hybrid and all-electric buses.The Marguerite shuttle is named for the four horse bus also called Marguerite run by Jasper Paulsen in the earliest days of the university; it initially cost 10 cents for students, 15 cents for others though the fare was later raised to 25 cents for everyone.