{"id":2566,"date":"2012-10-18T00:00:46","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T04:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.archives.nd.edu\/about\/news\/?p=2566"},"modified":"2012-10-18T00:00:46","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T04:00:46","slug":"lilacs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/lilacs\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lilacs"},"content":{"rendered":" <\/a>
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On the corner of Notre Dame Avenue and Napoleon Boulevard stands an old yellow-bricked house.\u00a0 Located at 1136 N. Notre Dame Avenue, the house was built for Notre Dame professor of English Maurice Francis Egan<\/a>.\u00a0 Egan was the first lay professor with a wife and children and the house was a necessity.\u00a0 Egan’s friends from far and wide sent him numerous lilac bushes and the house was christened “The Lilacs.”<\/p>\n

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“The Lilacs” – Home of Professor Maurice Francis Egan at 1136 N. Notre Dame Avenue, c1890s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a prominent writer, Egan was embraced into the South Bend social scene.\u00a0 The Lilacs was the site of numerous luncheons, dinner parties, and student organization meetings.\u00a0 Many visitors to Notre Dame also stayed overnight at the Lilacs.<\/p>\n

After Egan left Notre Dame for Catholic University, Professor Charles Petersen lived in the house.\u00a0 After his death in 1913, a number of faculty members and post-graduate students occupied the house.\u00a0 In the fall of 1915, seventeen students lived in the house, and this tradition continued for several years until more student dormitories were built on-campus.<\/p>\n

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A group of students living at The Lilacs, 1915-1916<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While the number of residents was small, the student publications Scholastic<\/em> and Dome<\/em> yearbook often mentioned the Lilacs (below is a tongue-in-check listing of the rules of the Lilacs).\u00a0 The Lilac students may have been seen as the privileged few.\u00a0 Since the house was situated a distance from the heart of campus, its residents had more quite setting for studying and a bit more freedom to go into town.\u00a0 The house was also on the Hill Street streetcar route, so most students would have been aware of its existence.<\/p>\n

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Directory and Rules of “The Lilacs,” from the wit and humor section of the 1915 Dome<\/em> yearbook<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the students left the Lilacs for on-campus housing, faculty members continued to live in the house for many years.\u00a0 The Lilacs still stands today, but is now a private residence.<\/p>\n

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Sources:
\nNotre Dame: One Hundred Years <\/em>by Rev. Arthur J. Hope, CSC
\nScholastic
\nDome <\/em>yearbook
\nThe University of Notre Dame: A Portrait of Its History & Campus<\/em> by Thomas Schlereth<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/a>

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On the corner of Notre Dame Avenue and Napoleon Boulevard stands an old yellow-bricked house.\u00a0 Located at 1136 N. Notre Dame Avenue, the house was built for Notre Dame professor of English Maurice Francis Egan.\u00a0 Egan was the first lay professor with a wife and children and the house was a necessity.\u00a0 Egan’s friends from … Continue reading “The Lilacs”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n ","protected":false},"author":4370,"featured_media":2586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[20,74],"class_list":["post-2566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nd-history","tag-buildings-and-grounds","tag-student-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-25 00:02:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndarchives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}