Before The Clemson House
Pre-1950, the where would be Clemson House was home to the Clemson Club Hotel. While there is not an abundance of information surrounding it, it is known that it served as a large boarding house that served to host faculty and their families. During this time, the college hosted formal dances where the student cadets invited female “chaperones” from surrounding colleges and towns to join them. Since it stood while Clemson was still an all-male military college, if there was room it would house women that would come for dances and various overnight stays. In 1948, Clemson President Dr. Robert Poole received a report that called for apartment-style housing in place of the "dilapidated Clemson Club Hotel". The house-hotel would provide meeting rooms, a large lounge, and a more modernized and upscale look, leading to the opening of the Clemson House in 1950 (1).
Dr. Allan Grubb, a Clemson history expert, had a few bits of knowledge on the Club Hotel. He stated as follows:
"I don’t recall any accounts of people who actually stayed there, but I’m pretty sure that Ernest (Whitey) Lander, a professor of history, stayed there before he was drafted for WW2. I’ve never seen pictures of the interior and doubt there are any. I suspect the Clemson Club Hotel was named that because it was not really meant as a hotel but as a residence for people working at the college since there were limited accommodations in town. That’s why there were once houses on campus for professors (all gone now, I think) and the Trustee House was built for the Board of Trustees to say at when the Board met. There was a hotel in Calhoun over by the railway station and the original town, but it may not have been around later. Most small towns like Clemson didn’t have accommodations (motels came later) and had “guest houses,” which are private homes that put up travelers and visitors when they came by. There was also a “boarding house,” Mrs. Newman’s (where the Mellow Yellow used to be and now a condo and Copy Shop) where some college people lived and many college families ate lunch or dinner. Boarding houses were common places of residences in the early 20th century and earlier (2)."
(1) “History of Clemson House.” Experience Magazine, 2016, https://media.clemson.edu/studentaffairs/fb/Experience%20Magazine/files/assets/basic-html/page-16-17.html.
(2) Grubb, Alan. Interview. Conducted by Ross Niemer. 02 May 2022.