CHAPTER-HOUSE, the chamber in which the chapter or heads of the monastic bodies (see ABBEY and CATHEDRAL) assem ble to transact business. They are of various forms; some are oblong apartments, as Canterbury, Exeter, Chester, Gloucester, etc. ; some octagonal, as Salisbury, Westminster, Wells, Lincoln, York, etc. That at Lincoln has ten sides, and that at Worcester is circular ; most are vaulted internally and polygonal externally, and some, as Salisbury, Wells, Lincoln, Worcester, etc., depend on a single slight vaulting shaft for the support of the massive vaulting. They are often provided with a vestibule, as at West minster, Lincoln and Salisbury, and are almost exclusively Eng lish. On the continent of Europe the chapter-house is universally rectangular, and frequently of great size and dignity.
In the United States the word chapter-house refers almost in variably to the campus meeting or residence halls of the members of the collegiate Greek letter societies—fraternities or sororities with names chosen from various combinations of the Greek alphabet, as Delta Theta Psi, Sigma Alpha, etc.