On the outskirts of Greek Row is an unimposing green clapboard house. Its proximity to UW sororities and fraternities might prompt one to gloss over it as simply another Hellenic establishment.

But students wandering up to the house in search of Thursday night’s next party would be surprised to find that the house has not been a fraternity since nearly half a century ago.

Instead, the house serves as a residence hall to 22 students, some of whom are curious about the origins of the place they call home and have started to dig up the history of the mysterious house.

2104 House, which received its name from its address on Northeast 45th Street, gives no outward clues as to its rich history. With the help of relics found in the house that date back to the 1930s, residents began to unravel the secrets. What they discovered was a place with a multitude of identities, two different locations and many memories.

Among the residents of the most mysterious on-campus housing option is junior Chelsea Oughton.

With the help of former 2104 House resident adviser and UW alumna Sara Wilson, Oughton began to delve into the mystery of the house.

“We were always interested in the history of the house,” Oughton said. “We knew it was old, and we had heard a lot of rumors.”

Artifacts hidden throughout the house fueled the mystery of its history.

For curious students living in the other residence halls on campus, all knowledge of the history of their rooms must be gleaned from graffiti on walls or the often-unpleasant artifacts left behind when old residents move out. The same is not true for 2104 House.

In the basement laundry room sits an ancient filing cabinet brimming with yellowed Russian homework assignments from the house’s stint as a Russian language immersion establishment — it was affectionately known as the Russian House.

Across the room is a small cabinet that contains floor plans of what the house looked like before it underwent remodeling.

On the main floor’s sitting room, Oughton found a guest book that dates back to the 1970s.

Although Oughton insists the house is not haunted, the dark basement, creaking stairs and many nooks and crannies beg to tell the story of the house’s past.

Oughton has amassed a weighty pile of documents that she found in the house and through research in the library. Included are pages from fraternity and sorority yearbooks, invitations to traditional Russian Christmas parties once held annually in the house, minutes from Russian House meetings and old articles from The Daily.

“I went to special collections and flipped through yearbooks and old issues of The Daily just searching for pictures that looked like the house,” Oughton said.

As she pored over half a century’s worth of relics, Oughton began to piece together the sporadic history of the house she now calls home.

The house’s first role at the UW was as home to the sisters in the Delta Gamma sorority, whose Beta Chapter at the UW was chartered in 1903. Rumor has it that in the 1920s, the sisters of Delta Gamma decided the house was too old. Rather than undergoing demolition, it was uprooted from its foundations and moved across the street.

In the new location, the house was purchased by the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity in 1923. While living in the house, the members of Phi Sigma Kappa garnered the title “The Friendliest House on Campus,” according to the yearbook from 1957.

The pages of yearbooks that Oughton has accumulated paint a picture of what life in the house used to be like. The yearbook from 1956 speaks of a “‘Roaring Twenties’ pledge dance with real gin in the bathtub.”

The “Friendliest House on Campus” was disbanded, and in the early 1960s a group of students took over the house with the idea of establishing a place where students could be completely immersed in Russian language and culture.

During her research, Oughton uncovered the rules of the house.

“If you spoke English in the Russian House, you were fined 5 cents,” Oughton said.

An anonymous account from 1964 details one of the first summers that students occupied the Russian House.

“We began to get acquainted right away with each other, the meal system, the fine system (of which your author was the first victim), and the Russian language,” wrote the author. “Actually, one got so used to Russian that outside in the big world, to hear [English] was a strange experience.”

Because the students were restricted to speaking only Russian within the confines of the house, they craftily invented ways to shirk their responsibilities.

“A game was invented which consists in leaping like mad in and out of the house, speaking all the time, changing one’s language to suit the surroundings,” wrote the anonymous author.

According to a 1971 article in The Daily, the walls of the Russian House were lined with portraits of Russian authors like Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Gogol. The deep red carpet and inclusion of an ikon, a traditional painting of a holy figure, added to the Russian atmosphere of the house.

The Russian House was originally a separate entity from the school; however, in the late 1960s the Slavic Languages and Literature Department endorsed its mission. When the Russian House fell into financial difficulties in 1979, the UW’s Housing and Food Services (HFS) purchased the building.

Residents of the house faced criticism as the United States’ relationship with the Soviet Union deteriorated. In response to controversy, they strived to present Russian culture in a positive light.

“We try to promote cultural awareness because people think of Russia as a government,” said Laura Schultz, the vice president and cultural attaché to the Russian House in the ’80s, as quoted in The Daily. “You don’t understand a people through their government, but through their culture.”

The Russian House continued to thrive for 34 years, until tenancy began to decline. According to an article in The Daily, in the early ’90s only 14 of the available 24 spots were filled.

With interest in the Russian House so low, HFS announced that if it were unable to recruit 20 more people, the house would be stripped of the necessity to know Russian and converted into regular dormitory housing.

Despite the efforts of dedicated housemates who sent information to high schools and put up advertisements around campus, the waning interest proved irreversible. Ultimately, HFS followed through and turned the house into a small, co-ed dormitory.

Today, the clapboard residence on the far north side of campus goes by 2104 House, although many of the residents still affectionately refer to it as the Russian House.

While the house is no longer a special interest community, it remains one of the most unique options for housing. The small number of rooms — the house now accommodates 27 students — has fostered close relationships among the residents.

Because of the small number of students who live in 2104 House, its existence remains a mystery to most UW students.

“It’s not like a dorm at all,” Oughton said. “There are 22 people living in the house right now; we’re all very close and it’s a very special community.”

Residents who live in the house have the opportunity to cook meals for themselves as opposed to purchasing a meal plan for on-campus dining halls.

“Most of us are cooking here and eating here together; we’re even taking a lot of the same classes together on purpose because we’ve become so close,” Oughton said.

The connections made between students last well beyond the three quarters of the school year and help to make the 2104 House experience unique.

Sophomore Laura Reader most enjoyed the opportunities to meet new people while living in the house this year.

“It’s hard sometimes because a lot of students are international and only stay for one quarter,” Reader said. “We stay in touch, though. First quarter, there was a guy from Australia who we talk to still. Then there was someone from Holland who stayed with my family. It’s all part of the positive environment that’s created.”

Once again, the future of the house at 2104 NE 45th St has been called into question. At a Resident Hall Student Association meeting in February, Rob Lubin, the assistant director of facilities and operations for HFS, and Ann Gigli, an HFS administrator, presented a plan to revamp the dormitories on campus. When asked about the fate of the house, the HFS representatives said that they had no plan to retain 2104 House as a student residence hall.

“It’s really, really sad,” Reader said. “On some level, I can see why; the house isn’t full and it wasn’t full last quarter — most don’t even know it exists.”

Oughton shared Reader’s sentiments.

“It’s really disappointing because it’s such a special place,” she said. “It is old. … It has leaks and the floorboards creak, but that’s part of the character, and that’s why we love it.”