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Today the two basement kitchens are still referred to as Renaissance and O'Keeffe, and the nine sections of the building that were once separate houses are now "suites" bearing the same names.
=== Archived ===
As the University of Michigan expanded onto the green fields of North Campus in the 1950s, members of the Inter-Cooperative Council saw a unique opportunity for expanding the co-op system as well. They persuaded the University to set aside three acres of a hilltop off Broadway for future co-op development, but it was not until the 1960s, and the promise of assistance from the United States government, that the dream of a new North Campus co-op moved closer to reality.
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In the 1960s, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was funding a range of new housing across the country, including affordable housing for college students. Working with the University, ICC members managed to secure a $1.24 million, 50-year low-interest loan from HUD to build a brand-new housing co-op complex. This was the first-ever HUD loan to a non-profit student-owned housing program, marking a high point of student organizing at the campus which had already helped birth the 1960s student movement through the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society|Students for a Democratic Society]].
Tampold & Wells, an architectural firm which had designed co-ops at several Canadian universities, laid out a co-op complex consisting of eighteen interconnected "houses" arranged around the crest of the hill. Although a fall 1970 opening had been scheduled, the co-ops were not yet complete for the start of classes. Its prospective residents students slept on the floor at the adjacent fraternity house, now the Stearns Building, until the building was finished.
Despite the initial plans, it does not appear that North Campus ever functioned as eighteen separate co-ops. Instead, the planned eighteen were consolidated into nine "houses" making up the "North Campus Division" of the Inter-Cooperative Council. Each house had 24 members and its own treasurer, although co-op meals were shared in the lower level dining halls. The names of the houses reflected the social and political concerns of members at the time - Sinclair was named for then-imprisoned Ann Arbor poet and activist [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sinclair_%28poet%29|John Sinclair]], Russell for pacifist philosopher [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_russell|Bertrand Russell]], and Zapata for Mexican revolutionary [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Zapata|Emiliano Zapata]] - as well as more literary inspirations.
By the early 1980s, the North Campus co-op system showed signs of strain. To address rising vacancies and turnover, the board voted in 1984 to make the building's large rooms optional singles, instead of assuming that each would have two students. In 1985, however, the building was technically shut down for lack of members. Consultant Jim Jones, who had worked with other large houses at the Inter-Cooperative Council of Austin, attributed the problems to the limited time of the co-op population, which at that time consisted almost entirely of graduate students, combined with what he viewed as the inefficient administrative structure of nine separate houses.{{ :escher-bonfire.jpg?300|}}
With the ICC Board, Jones oversaw the rebirth of North Campus as two houses, Renaissance and O'Keeffe, organized around their respective kitchens, based roughly on the Austin College Houses model. The Board also considered the option of consolidating the entire building into a single co-op, but decided against it. Jones, noting that the North Campus building had been artificially "defined out of existence" as a cohesive whole, in 1987 proposed creating the institution of a new "third body" to represent the shared interests of all North Campus co-op residents, substituting for the old "North Campus Division." This entity became Escher House. The consolidation of the nine co-ops may have averted the unfortunate fate that befell other large student co-ops, such as Berkeley's Barrington Hall, although cultural factors may have played a significant role as well.
Over the 1990s, and into the 2000s, co-op residents maintained distinct cultures at Renaissance and O'Keeffe House. For a time, Renaissance meals were vegetarian while O' Keefe meals were not, prompting talk of a "Tofu Curtain" dividing the houses as the Iron Curtain had divided the city of Berlin. In recent years, the increasingly expensive Ann Arbor rental market has prompted a gradual increase in the number of undergraduate students at the co-ops, and they have attracted an increasing number of international students as well. The co-ops are truly a global microcosm, but continue to share in the simple pleasures of Work Holiday and groundhog observation.
In April 2014 Renaissance and O'Keeffe House voted to unite and formed Escher House. A new [[https://drive.google.com/a/umich.edu/#folders/0B_E9e2KLqwRSV1dCZ1RtQTFjeUE|Constitution]] was written, through combining the two old Constitutions and creating new positions and committees to help run the house as efficiently as possible.
