This weekend, Bowles Hall Residential College will greet 183 new undergraduates.

Berkeley reports.

Residential college redux: Bowles is back

Berkeley’s Bowles Hall reopens this weekend as a residential college after an 11-year effort by alumni who raised $42 million to restore the aging, castle-like building and return it to its roots as a live-learn community for undergraduates.

Believed to be the nation’s first residential college, Bowles Hall opened in 1929 to male students who for four years would live, eat, study and be mentored there. But by the 1970s, Bowles was a conventional dorm for men. Meal service was cut in 2001, and in 2005 the hall housed only male freshmen. Over the decades, upkeep of Bowles, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, grew too costly for the campus.