Azel Backus House

The Backus House is home to Hamilton Hillel. Equipped with a meat and dairy kosher kitchen, a prayer room with Torah Ark, and a dining room for weekly Shabbat observances and holy days.

Among the oldest buildings on campus, Azel Backus House was built in 1802 as a boarding house for Hamilton-Oneida Academy students. It originally stood a few hundred feet further down the hill, beside present-day Campus Road, and was moved to its current location later in the 19th century. In 1812, the building became the home of Hamilton College’s first president, the Reverend Azel Backus. In subsequent years, the building served as a faculty dwelling and, later, as Alumni House. In 1984, it was refurbished with a faculty dining room and named in honor of the College’s first president.