Ruths' House
Ruths’ House was organized in 1993 and purchased in 1994. Finlandia is the official drink of house meetings, as per their constitution.
Ruths' honors two women: Ruth Buchanan - a Labadie Radical Literature librarian who provided free labor to the cooperative serving as house mother, and Ruth Bluck - the first woman to become ICC President in 1946.
In the early to mid-1990s, the ICC was seeking out another house to expand the cooperative community, and Ruths' House, then referred to as Thayer House for its location on North Thayer Street, was proposed as the next acquisition. While there was a movement in favor of purchasing another house, there was internal opposition within the ICC as well, seen on the right through separate texts as well as tension in dialogue between typed and written text over a statement against the purchase of Thayer House.
Conflicting interests are reflected here in the letter to Eugene Albers (below), the former owner of what would become Ruths' House, where the details indicate that the acquisition of the house was a bumpy process with a drawn out transfer of hands. Despite the first referendum's decision however, the ICC ultimately acquired "Thayer House" and the first house members' meeting went underway.
Below you can also see the minutes from the first house meeting, as well as the first minutes labelled under "Ruths'" rather than "Thayer", however it must be said that no documented evidence could be found of the decision-making process that led to the name change. These notes give insight into the humor and personalities of cooperative residents expressed in logistical documents, something typically reserved for more serious-in-tone writing styles, and the range in time of these minutes reflects differing needs and interests of the house during its existence.
