Eighth in a series of stories detailing housing options available to Boston University students for the 2004-05 academic year.
Cozy living spaces in convenient areas are what Boston University students will find on Bay State Road and Commonwealth Avenue apartments, residents say.
College of Communication junior Tanya Delisle said her 722 Commonwealth Ave. apartment is an ideal place to live as an upperclassman, and she likes the building’s location because it is close to many of her classes.
“I really like it,” Delisle said. “It’s nice. It’s a homey feeling. You’ve got the courtyard, so it’s separated from the street. It’s also nice because you can just roll out of bed and walk to class.”
According to Director of Housing Marc Robillard, more than 1,200 students live on Bay State Road and in the Commonwealth Avenue apartments, which consist of 52 dormitory-style residences and 10 apartment-style buildings. The brownstones have singles, doubles, triples and quad room types, and Robillard said he thinks the location of the buildings – just a short walk from many of the campus’ major buildings – is what attracts students to the residences.
“The small size of the buildings, the location to the center of campus, proximity to public transportation and access to the Esplanade” is what allures many students, Robillard said in an email. “These are old single family residences that remind people of the old, elegant Back Bay.”
Delisle said she has not noticed too many problems with Commonwealth Avenue buildings, except for the noise that comes from street traffic and late-night partiers.
“Anything echoes in this courtyard,” Delisle said of the enclosed area between the buildings. “You get people who’ve been partying at night at like 3 a.m. and you just want to go asleep and they’re yelling at the top of their lungs. And sometimes you can hear traffic going by. As soon as you live here, you get used to it and you just block it out and go asleep.”
But College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Jennifer Sambatakos said living in her 161 Bay State Road brownstone has been a nightmare. According to Sambatakos, she has heard about mice and cracked ceilings in addition to her own problems with the building.
“We have lots of problems,” she said. “Things like the toilets overflowing, [water] running down a couple of floors until the fire alarms going off. My heater exploded and [Buildings ‘ Grounds] didn’t come. My fire alarm went off and B’G wouldn’t come. B’G left my room with it filling up with smoke.”
She said university officials left her room and didn’t come back for 3 hours after a fire alarm went off.
“One night, my room was 100 degrees and they had to come and shut off the heat,” she said.
Sambatakos said her problems have not just been limited to her room, as the bathroom has been another source of frustration.
“The toilet’s always clogged, the showers overflow, there’s no grout inside the bathtub,” she said. “They put in some kind of industrial fan that doesn’t work. They don’t clean it everyday. They definitely don’t clean it on the weekends but they still don’t clean it every weekday. And the ceiling is leaking. The ceiling will leak on you while you go to the bathroom.”
While she said the location and not having to deal with security guards or signing in friends is a benefit of the brownstones, the cons of the building far outweigh the pros.
While Sambatakos lives in one of the more aged brownstones, Robillard said more than 20 of the Bay State Road residences have been renovated, although there are no imminent plans for projects this summer.
School of Hospitality Administration sophomore Olivia Wu lives in one of the renovated brownstones, the SHA house at 186 Bay State Rd. Wu said she is very impressed by her building.
“I have a lot of space and a lot of freedom because I don’t have security here,” Wu said. “I live in one of the renovated ones, so everything’s really pretty in here.”
Wu added that she is very happy that she chose to live in specialty housing and that it has helped her transition into SHA.
“Because I transferred into the [SHA], I didn’t know anybody in the school at all,” Wu said. “I got to know a lot more people in the school through the house. In addition to that, since I know all these people in the house, I’ve learned more about the school and the programs and what classes to take. What other people are taking and what other people have taken because they’re upperclassmen here and I can see what I missed out through the freshman here.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
