Hall Maseeh Hall is located at 305 Memorial Drive, at the intersection of Memorial Drive and Massachusetts Avenue, across the Avenue from MIT's Building 1. The building itself predates MIT's move to Cambridge in 1916. It was originally operated as the "Riverbank Court Hotel" from 1901 to 1937. In 1938, MIT reopened it as "Graduate House", later renaming it "Ashdown House" after its first faculty housemaster, Avery Allen Ashdown. By the beginning of the 21st century, the building had become run-down and in need of renovation. Graduate students were moved out, to a new Ashdown House (NW35) located much further away, a controversial decision justified by a desire to house all undergrads as close as possible to MIT's central campus. The exterior of the emptied building was immediately repaired to stop water leaks and further deterioration, but there was no funding to renovate the interior of the structure. In 2010, Fariborz Maseeh (ScD 1990, Civil Engineering) donated $24 million for the purpose of increasing MIT's undergraduate enrollment by 270 students (an increase of 6%). To enable this, the number of undergraduate dormitory beds needed to be increased, since MIT now requires all undergraduate students to live in dormitories on campus for at least their first year. Fariborz Maseeh's donation was used to renovate the building, and the building now bears his name. Maseeh Hall was first opened to undergrad residents in August 2011. Upon its re-opening, Maseeh Hall was MIT's largest undergrad dorm with 462 beds; in 2013, the building's occupancy was further increased to 490. The lobby of Maseeh Hall is architecturally notable for its spacious vaulting and mosaic decorations made of Guastavino tile. McCormick Hall McCormick Hall, located at 320 Memorial Drive, is a women-only dormitory housing 237 undergrads. It consists of two 8-floor towers (the east tower and the west tower) and an annex converted from two adjacent brownstone buildings. The three sections are connected on the ground floor. Each tower has a penthouse on the top floor that looks out on the Boston skyline. The east tower has only singles while the west tower has singles, doubles, and triples. The funds for building McCormick Hall came from Katharine Dexter McCormick (SB 1904, Biology), a leading biologist, suffragist, and philanthropist in the early twentieth century. McCormick Hall was designed to advocate and encourage female participation in the field of STEM, supporting gender equality in the former U.S.