I only heard recently that OU’s Board of Trustees is considering buying or building a new house for President and Mrs. McDavis or, in lieu of that, remodeling the Italianate mansion that has been the home of the school’s presidents since 1952 when the Bakers moved in.
I am sure the Board will consider the decision carefully and I hope they will decide to remodel 29 Park Place. It was built in 1899 for coal magnate and businessman Clinton L. Poston. In the early 1920s Mrs. Thomas Biddle, Poston’s daughter, and her husband became the owners, and in 1951 Ohio University acquired the house from Mrs. Biddle.
Before the ’50s, OU presidents did not live on campus — perhaps providing special housing for university presidents was not in vogue at the time — but they seemed to live nearby, as did other prominent Athens residents. According to archival records of demolished buildings, President Wilson (1824-1839) lived on the east side of University Terrace across the street from what is now Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium and later President Ryors (1848-1852) occupied the same house. President Scott (1872-1883) lived on East Union Street, and President Super (1883-1896 and 1899-1901) lived on West Union Street at the present site of Bromley Hall. Before moving into 29 Park Place, the Bakers stayed on East Union Street in what is now Trisolini House.
Though these men and their off-campus successors were not literally on the campus, they too experienced the inconveniences of living among spirited young people. President Wilson, for example, was annoyed when his young OU neighbors “rolled stones or brickbats in the college halls in the darkness and silence of the night,” or fastened up “the doors of the recitation rooms, so that teachers could not enter in the morning,” or made “loud and tumultuous noises in and about college.”
In later years, when a popular OU prank involved tying someone in his room and pushing burning newspapers in over the transom of the locked door — “smoking” him — there was only the president to catch the miscreants and enforce the punishments decided by a faculty committee. In President Alden’s day, bricks and pieces of pipe were hurled though the front windows by irritated students and President Sowle was pelted with snowballs one winter night when he came out to greet carolers.
I am not suggesting that any residents of 29 Park Place be subjected to threats or serious discomfort. But I do suggest that it is a privilege to live so conveniently near the College Green and Cutler Hall, a privilege to live in such a beautiful, tree-shaded mansion, a privilege to live in such an historic building.
I hope the university will continue to maintain the house for the current president as well as for future OU presidents.
Remodel it.
Betty Hollow is an OU alumna and the author of Ohio University 1804-2004: The Spirit of a Singular Place.
