A small cottage once stood on the shoreline just north of the Frautschi Point entrance gate. Probably constructed as a summer residence in the early 1900s, it was used as a “Superintendent’s Cottage” for the Tent Colony, a residential community of summer session students and their families.
Each June beginning in 1919, Mr. and Mrs. Albert and Eleanor Gallistel moved into the cottage to assume their duties as chaperones for the “tent colonists.”
Although Albert was the university’s director of Physical Plant Planning, it is clear from the “Camp Gallistella” newsletters and annual meeting minutes that it was Eleanor who provided much of the day-to-day oversight at the colony. In addition to helping keep order among the residents (who numbered as many as 300 at the Tent Colony’s height in the 1920s), Mrs. Gallistel also hosted a formal tea party for women residents each summer.
Following the Tent Colony’s closure in 1962, the cottage was used by the Meteorology Department as a storage facility. The exact date when it was demolished is unknown.