Founded in 1895, Cannon Club first occupied the small house that Tiger Inn had
used from 1893 until 1895.
The following year, Cannon occupied the
"Incubator",
which Cap & Gown had just relocated to Olden Street.
Cannon remained in the Incubator until 1899, when it purchased the Osborn house
on the south side of Prospect, between the McCosh and West
residences.
By 1908, the old Osborn House was deteriorating badly, and a design for a new
clubhouse appeared in the Class of 1910 Bric.
This proposal,
which looks suspiciously like Cottage Club, was not executed, but shortly thereafter
Cannon commissioned Edgar Seeler, a Philadelphia architect, to design a new
building.
The resulting structure was the first club on
Prospect to use the local stone that was increasingly prevalent in the
architecture of the campus. (This gives the building its academic feel.) Cannon
had main components: the main, three-story body and the single-story kitchen
wing on the east, the latter dominated by an enormous chimney.
Cannon's facade is remarkably plain compared with other clubs on Prospect. The
rear elevation and interiors, however, are far more varied. Invisible from the
front is a pair of asymmetrical wings with gabled roofs. (These wings are
clearly visible in the aerial photograph of Prospect, with Cannon appearing in
the bottom left corner of the picture.
) Cannon's two-
story
living room was once one of the finest spaces on Prospect, dominated by three
large windows and an enormous, medieval fireplace.
Cannon Club suspended operations in 1969, although it lives on today as part of the Dial-Elm-Cannon conglomerate. Many of the building's distinctive interior spaces were entirely reconfigured when the University converted the building into offices for the Office of Population Research and renamed it Notestein Hall.