Before East Dormitory became a men’s dormitory in 1906, many students lodged at The Elon College Hotel on Trollinger Avenue
If the Southern Railway’s Piedmont Air Line No. 35 was on time Wednesday, Sept. 2, 1891, then S.M. Smith arrived at the Mill Point depot at around 6:35 p.m. to enroll at Elon College. Smith was an active member of the Hayes Chapel Christian Church near Auburn, North Carolina, nine miles east of Raleigh. He had waved goodbye to his family two and a half hours earlier. At 20 years old, Smith had graduated from the Auburn Academy, a private classical school that was the equivalent of a high school. He had taught for one year at the public “common school” he had attended as a youth. The $125 he had earned from teaching school was sewn in the inside pocket of his new coat. To take care of incidentals, he had the income from a patch of sweet potatoes he had grown that summer on his family’s farm.
For Smith and several other students like him who arrived on that train, their first stop was the Elon College Hotel on Trollinger Avenue, where many male students stayed prior to registering for classes. The hotel was owned and operated by Walter L. “Buck” Smith (no relation) and his first wife, Alice Phipps Smith. A native of eastern Guilford County, Smith was hired in the spring of 1888 as depot agent for the new railway freight station at Mill Point. That October he purchased land and built a small one-story frame house a short distance west of the depot on what is now Trollinger Avenue. By the time his house was finished early in 1889, Smith realized that businessmen who stopped at the depot to visit the Altamahaw, Ossipee and Alamance cotton mills needed a place to spend the night. But the Smiths’ decision to enlarge their house to serve as a hotel may have been influenced more by the Southern Christian Church’s decision to build Elon College in the area.
An ad for the hotel in the first issue of the Elon College Monthly published in June 1891 advertised “meals at any hour.” Rates were 25 cents for transients and 50 cents for drummers (traveling salesmen). Monthly board was $10 for students and $15 for others. Male students who were not living in the temporary dormitory rooms on the third floor at the college rented rooms from local residents or contracted for a monthly rate at the hotel. The college’s dining hall, a one-story frame annex to the women’s dormitory, was not large enough to seat all the students, so the female students and faculty who lived on campus ate in the dining hall. Male students who did not board at the hotel contracted for their meals with families in the community.
