From 1900–1910, five lots were purchased by single women who built and operated boarding houses. The location was perfect: the street abutted the newly-established fraternity row on Madison Lane and was across the street from Central Grounds.
When the boarding house proprietresses (the first generation of women on Chancellor Street) passed away, these houses once central to the University community became abandoned. However, in the late 1970s the newly established University sororities bought the houses, transforming them from places of feminine-generated economy to residences for organized sisterhood. Chancellor Street once again became a living feminine landscape.
The houses continue to exist on a domestic scale, different from the Madison Lane fraternity houses ornamented with large porticos and proliferated with architectural pomp and circumstance. The architecture reflects the women who built and operated the structures as boarding houses, which would have been similar to the dwellings these women left behind, or would have built had they created their own families. The houses' proximity to one another along a narrow street, combined with the density of residents within them ensured a thriving residential community. Since the houses were taken over by sororities, Chancellor Street is once again a living student community–only the gender of its residents have changed.