This series of residence halls along the Lake Mendota shoreline are collectively referred to as the “Lakehore Residence Halls,” or, more informally, as the “Lakeshore Dorms.”
They began to be constructed in the 1920s, when Adams and Tripp Halls were built as the first men’s residence halls on campus (Ladies Hall, later renamed Chadbourne Hall, had been constructed on central campus as a residence hall for women back in 1871).
With Adams and Tripp anchoring this cluster of halls in the east, new structures were gradually erected west down the lakeshore over the next several decades, and were essentially complete by the 1960s.
Students in the Lakeshore Residence Halls have long been among the heaviest users of the Lakeshore Path, and the nearness of Lake Mendota and the Lakeshore Nature Preserve has always been one of the chief attractions of living in this part of campus.