Pi Kappa Phi at the University of South Alabama has called several places home. According to Brother Curtis Weems (Gamma Phi 18), "Sometime in1965 (I think), the fraternity rented a large old two story house on Government Street just east of Ann Street next to the Dobb’s House fast food restaurant. I joined Kappa Phi in the winter of 1965/66 and became Pledge President and lived in the house."
Here is a picture of a house next to the Dobbs House circa 1960. It is uncertain if this is the actual house, but you can see the type of house we had.
(Photo courtesy of University of South Alabama Photo Archive)
Gamma Phi has had six houses since the chapter was chartered in 1971. From 1972 to 1980, the fraternity had 287 Bay Front Road on Brookley Field. The chapter had to move from this house due to damaged caused by Hurricane Fredrick in September 1979.
After Hurricane Fredrick, the chapter moved into its second house. For a short while from 1980 to 1981 the chapter rented a house on Tanner Williams Road, across from Coast Guard base. If anyone has any pictures of this house, please contact us.
In 1981 the chapter was able to secure a house on the campus of USA. From 1981 to 1987, Gamma Phi resided at 6050 Old Shell Road. The chapter used this house until early 1987. It later became the Alpha Phi Alpha house and then it served as the intramural field house. This house was torn down in the early 2000s to make way for expanded intramural parking.
During the colony period the chapter met at several apartment and condo club houses. We often used Providence Place Apartments (now Autumn Woods Apartments). From 1987 to 1989 the chapter had 23 Providence Place Apartments, casually referred to as "Hell".
The Pikes lost their house in late 1989 and the chapter was very excited to procure our fifth location. From 1990 to 1998 the chapter was housed at 5959 Old Shell Rd. It later became, and is at present, the Kappa Sigma house. If you look closely you can see two cracks in the front window.
The flagship house of Gamma Phi certainly is its present location at #3 Fraternity Row. According to Brian Bradley, Gamma Phi 304 "Bart Winkler and Tom Peterson along with other members of the alumni housing group worked with the University and the chapter to make the dream of the house become reality. As Archon, I was included in most of the meetings and met with the chapter's housing committee. As the fall semester of 1998 approached it did not look promising to us that we would be moving in. In fact, it looked as though there would be 23 homeless Pikapps until the day of move-in: Sunday, August 16th, 1998. It was campus move-in day in the dorms and we had planned to move in to the house on Saturday so that we could assist incoming freshmen and other students with dorm move-in. And so the morning of August 16th arrived, many of us packing up our things from our current dorm rooms (Delta 3 & 4 just to name two) or our apartments just to be told the floors in our rooms had been polished and they wouldn't be dry until later that day. In order to avoid the rain, we piled our things in the Party room downstairs and went to help at the dorms. It was not until 11pm that night that Andrew Wakeman and Ray Jones were able to move into their room on the 2nd floor after the construction crew finished polishing the floor. I am surprised they survived that night while sleeping with the fumes!"
Move In Day August 16, 1998. The complete list of original occupants is as follows:
Jeff Loman - 249 - Resident Advisor
Thad Hendrix - 273n2
Josef Wiggins - 288
Joey Smeraglia - 303
Brian Bradley - 304
Scott Bonnet - 307
AJ LeGrone - 320
Jeff Campbell -324
Andrew Wakeman - 326n2
Isaac Smith - 328n2
Jeremy Penton - 330
Ryan Holloway - 331
David Trammel - 332
Paul Schaffer - 334n2
Chris Fernandez - 335n2
Daniel Bright - 336n2
DeVan Hollman - 338n2
Adam Carpenter - 339n2
Gary Aucoin - 343
Ray Jones - 344n2
James Greene - 347
Jeremy Roop - 348
Brian Boudreaux - 349n2