The owner's name is handwritten on the right chest, "John H. Martin, California 1852".

This money vest is one of many historical articles of clothing stored in the textile vault at the Wayne County Historical Society.

This handsome money vest was worn by John H. Martin during the California Gold Rush. It would have been worn under his clothes. The vest has a secret pocket for cash and coin. There are visible coin marks. This vest was donated to the Wayne County Historical Society in 2002 by Duane Martin, son of Willis Martin of Fredericksburg, Ohio.

This banner hung across East Liberty Street in downtown Wooster to remind people to vote.

We’re seeing more and more political advertising, debates, and talk shows these days. We thought we’d take you back to the days before Super-PACs!

Can anyone tell us the time period of this photo, or what organization sponsored this banner?

McGaw Chapel on The College of Wooster campus. Building design by architect Victor Christ-Janer. Image courtesy of author.

You have two options: you can listen to his presentation via the embedded media player or you can read the transcript below.

Sacred Space.

In the history of the College there have been no less than three chapels.

Kauke, Memorial, and McGaw.

Kauke Chapel was housed in Old Main. Built in 1870, the grand five-story brick all-purpose building that was totally lost in the tragic fire on December 11th, 1901, 110 years ago this month.

The chapel within Old Main, 51 feet by 92 and 30 feet high was named after John H. Kauke who played the leading role in financing and the construction of Old Main.

One might argue that the fire was at least partially providential because Kauke Chapel had become too small and a larger one was needed.

The chapel bell in which Senator Marcus Hanna gave six hundred dollars to buy in the memory of President William McKinley.

The chapel went up and was dedicated on March 5th, 1902.

About the new chapel the Wayne County Democrat newspaper enthused,
“The new Memorial Chapel is to architectural beauty one of the very finest in Wooster, and there is no more handsome church edifice outside of the largest cities.”

Memorial Chapel circa 1905. Image courtesy of Alumni Relations, The College of Wooster.

When the Sunday pulpit was not filled by Westminister’s pastor, leading national religious figures were invited to hold forth, (garbled name), Ralph Sockman, Paul Shearer, Benjamin Nays–Mays, William Hudnut, Yale chaplin William Sloane Coffin, and Presbyterian minister George Buttrick of Madison Avenue Church in New York and Harvard Divinity School. Who incidentally returned to conduct Howard Lowry’s funeral service in 1967.

The Sunday pulpit became a Monday through Saturday lectern for College speakers, student leaders, faculty, administrators, President Lowry every two or three weeks, and a host of national and international figures.

Note. In 1953 a seven foot cross was hung over the choir loft. It certainly belonged there for Sunday worship, but even daily chapel, but sometimes i found it more ironical and amusing than problematic because by it’s very presence it had to look down on all sorts of secular speakers and groups and programs. Do you suppose the cross’s good-will might have been stretched a bit when in the 1960s, Saul Alinsky, radical community organizer, came one afternoon to speak in the chapel. His assistant, a young Jesse Jackson, yes, brought him a glass of water, while Alinsky standing in the pulpit, standing in the lectern, lighted his cigarette and puffed away as he spoke. (laughing)

As the College founded in 1866 aged, so did the 1902 Memorial Chapel. For one thing it became too small to contain the ever larger student body. Moreover it’s joints stiffened and creaked, well not literally. As early as 1947 one or two sharp-eyed observers noticed a couple of cracks on the inside walls. An examination showed that those walls were beginning to buckle. There was no plan to build a new chapel, so as a safety measure three steel tie-rods were installed up toward the ceiling to prevent those North and South walls from buckling. There were other signs of old age. The balcony drooped. The uneven floor had it’s ups and downs. The radiators clanked, sometimes annoyingly and loudly during silent prayer or pianissimo moment during a concert. (giggles)

In the late 1960s, there was a plan to build a new chapel. Although not before many persons attached to Memorial Chapel protested. Suggesting extensive remodeling, upgrading, expansion, couldn’t we do something, anything to save it?

Those in authority listened to the pleas and protests of those who wished to save the historic building, to no avail. There had to be a new chapel.

Location, (clears throat) excuse me, was considered, donor, donors identified. In his biography of Howard Lowry, Jim Blackwood has described how Foster McGaw came to the point of donating one million dollars toward the total cost of one point six million or so.
The, the remaining monies mostly came from a special fund of the national Presbyterian Church. McGaw’s gift was a memorial to his father, Francis A. McGaw class of ’85 (1885), and his mother.

Demolition of the old chapel began in the Summer of 1969 and McGaw Chapel began to take shape soon after. It was finished and dedicated in the Fall of 1971.

Entrance to McGaw Chapel on The College of Wooster campus. Photo courtesy of the author.

My late wife was one of those who soon dismissed it with moderate scorn, it really is a kind of churchy parking garage, she said. (laughing) She hated those bare cement block walls. Incidentally, they have been painted by now, thanks to President Grant Cornwell.

What it made, what made it churchy of course were the organ pipes, the pews, and the pulpit communion table with it’s Celtic cross brought out for Sunday services and then stored for the rest of the week.

Professor emeritus Paul Christianson wrote a positive and thoughtful review in the Wooster Alumni magazine; both inside and out there was much to behold and to experience, he said. He wrote that quote, the sharply angled towers of the chapel become an event in motion that involves with it the sky. And that, quote, it always it can’t be seen it invites our visual participation. Admitting there were numerous technical problems, the interior was, he said, a stark space, and that there was no sense of direction in the building. He noted that it was a place of experience. (giggles)

I’m not sure what he meant in his closing sentence when he observed that McGaw forces us to, quote, re-experience that mystery which is not an allusion. Those are his actual words. (laughing) A mystery reached, quote, through our human participation in the world and in each other. Don’t ask me to go further in terms of explaining those comments. (laughing)

What is surprising is, is the sixteen member chapel working committee made up of alumni, trustees, administrators, three faculty, two from the art department, and no students. A group more anchored in tradition than modernit, than modernity, would approve architect, Victor Christ-Janer’s, unusual design.

He was quite open in explaining what he had in mind. An innovative, non-traditional structure, that surely would reflect the ideals and experiences of America in the 1960s. Traditional reason is being tested, he asserted. God is irrational. So should the building that embodies his spirit be irrational. (laughing) He did not attempt to insert any spirituality into the design. Spirituality will emerge from those who are present, he explained. Christ-Janer admitted he was attempting to incor, also to incorporate a primeval level of imagery. A person can make a pilgrimage down into the cave-like interior, and then up to the roof garden which connotes the Biblical image of paradise. The shallow pool up there recalls religious water imagery, and the trees and shrubs will draw nature into the building, he explained.

Soon after McGaw was dedicated the flat roof leaked badly and some of us thought the rain water dripping down from the ceiling during a storm and caught by well-positioned trash barrels was very wet reality, not water imagery. (laughing)

Eventually, President, during President Hales administration the flat roof was water-proofed, the stains on the interior ceiling were covered with fresh paint, and the rain barrels stored.

Arn Lewis puts a positive spin on McGaw. As one of the few members of the working committee still alive today, he defends Christ-Janer’s design by remembering that the committee listened to the students who wanted a spare, simple chapel, not a throwback to some classical design. Like it or not, McGaw as he says, the product of a distinctive, volatile, volatile period in the history of Wooster. The campus community desired a plan stressing the communal experience encouraged, encouraging participation, and Christ-Janer delivered.

It’s my personal opinion that Professors Christianson and Lewis, speak for just a minority. (laughing)

One College Trustee had harsh words to the building, he’s worth repeating word for word, and I’m sure he speaks for many who don’t like McGaw.

Quote. I think that the committee was sold, sold a bill of goods. It was a triumph of ideology over common sense, and to some extent must have reflected President Garber Drushal’s or the Trustees desire to defer to the mood of the time. In my worst moments I suspect that it was an architectural blunder of major proportions which has been a blight upon the College ever since. As the architect said he wanted it to intrude upon the campus’ symmetry, to symbolize the disruption that religion should create in our lives. The building sure does intrude. (laughing) But I bet that there is not one undergraduate, graduate, in one hundred thousand who is thus inspired, instead it is, it’s a kind of big box statement about the poverty of imagination and thereby denies some of the most evocative possibilities within the Christian tradition the campus has thereby been impoverished unnecessarily. End quote.

Final thought. Let’s come at this another way. On several occasions President Drushal defended McGaw by explaining that the working committee, the administration, and the architect were laboring under severe restraints.

First. The new chapel would have to be large enough, 1600, to seat the whole student body, it was assumed that daily chapel would be ongoing, and there would be other occasions when the whole College community would gather.

Second. There really was only one point six million dollars to spend. The College was in debt. It had borrowed large sums to build other buildings.

Third. Foster and Mary McGaw had two simple requests. That the building would function as a chapel and that, and that it would contain a bride’s room. (laughing) And there is one in McGaw to this day.

Occasionally I have asked individuals to propose an alternate design given those first two constraints. Most of them just fall silent and shake their heads.

Thank you for listening. That’s it. (clapping)

Question and Answer period was not transcribed.

The large block of property located at the NW corner of Quinby avenue and Bowman street where Cornerstone Elementary School is located has a long history within the school system. This large city block, that stretches as far west as Grant street and as far north as Park avenue, at various times throughout the city’s history held at least two elementary schools before Cornerstone: Bowman St. School and Grant St. Elementary School, the Wooster City Junior High School, and the Wooster City High School.

Many people living today will remember that Cornerstone Elementary School was the Wooster City High School for many years. Wooster’s official historian and author, Harry S. McClarran, has graciously granted us permission to display some of the pictures from his book, A Glimpse from the Front Porch and a Bridge to the Past, of the old high school buildings. In addition, courtesy of Special Collections, The College of Wooster Libraries, an old picture postcard, circa early 1900s, of the old high school was found on a small 1″ negative they were able to enlarge and digitally reproduce for us to display here.

The original Wooster City High School was constructed in 1869 and opened for classes in 1870. According to Harry McClarran this building stood from 1870 until sometime in 1923, when the main part of it was demolished to build the structure we still have to this day known as Cornerstone Elementary School. A Wooster Weekly Republican report dated April 29, 1869 on page 3 stated:

Wooster Weekly Republican report in 1869 on the construction of the original Wooster City High School. Image courtesy of the Wa. Co. Public Library, Genealogy Dept.

Here’s a look back in time at the old school buildings on the NW corner of Quinby and Bowman:

Original Wooster City High School looking north from Bowman St. that was built in 1869. Image courtesy of Harry S. McClarran.

Original Wooster City High School. Image courtesy of Harry S. McClarran.

Original Wooster City High School. Photo credit: George and Mary McClarran, "Old and New Wooster".

Wooster Central High School. Image courtesy of Special Collections, The College of Wooster Libraries.

Wooster City High School, now Cornerstone Elementary School was built sometime between 1923-1924 according to Harry McClarran. Image courtesy of Harry S. McClarran.

Image of Cornerstone Elementary School in 2012. Image courtesy of the author.

The featured guest speaker for this event will be local history author and Daily Record reporter/editor, Paul Locher of Wooster, Ohio. Locher will debut a new historical lecture entitled, “Once Upon A Time in Wayne, County Ohio.” Written in honor of Wayne County’s 200th anniversary this year, Locher will examine the ongoing transition of the county’s culture and core beliefs from the time of it’s founding in 1812 to the present day. Mr. Locher who has recently written a 215-part historical series, “When Wayne County was a Whippersnapper“, which will be printed as an ongoing series in the Wooster Daily Record newspaper during 2012, will also talk about some of the more inventive methods of getting things done utilized by some of the pioneer residents of Wayne County.

Following the dinner, Paul Locher will hold a book-signing for some of his books written about Wayne County History. Mark your calendar for this event!

The College of Wooster Memorial Chapel circa 1910. Image courtesy of Library of Congress PPOC: © C.F. Bowden

You have two options: you can listen to his presentation via the embedded media player or you can read the transcript below.

Program Introduction – Jim Watt:
Gordon Tait has made quite a historical study of religion on the campus of The College of Wooster and um one of the facets of that study is about Chapel attendance, and as, many of, most of you know probably, up until year 1970 at The College of Wooster like at many private church-related colleges um Chapel attendance was required. That is just a memory for most of us now, but um Gordon we’re so happy that you’re here and we look forward to hearing about Chapel at The College of Wooster.

Speaker – Gordon Tait:
Thank-you Jim. Is this? Not, not turned on, I don’t think. Ah, um-um. Thank-you Jim. Um. Most of you know that i have a fairly serious (interrupted).

Audience Member:
Get closer.

Speaker – Gordon Tait:
Get closer. Good, thank-you.

Audience Member:
Just put it in your mouth. (laughter)

Speaker Gordon Tait:
Most of you know that i have a fairly serious ah lower-back problem so standing for any length of time um, is painful, ah, with your indulgence i’ll remain seated while i read my paper.

This paper is about chapel, and The Chapel, at The College of Wooster. Or sacred space, sacred time question-mark, or a parking garage four days a week. (laughter)

The best thing that could happen to McGaw, remarked a former Wooster official, would be to have a terrorist steal onto the campus some night and blow-up the whole thing. (laughter)

Sounds downright traitorous and he was at least half serious. All the same he was giving voice to what many Woosterites thought about McGaw, who as we might say have been underwhelmed by the building.

Hold on. We’re getting ahead of our story and we need to back up.

What we have here are two lines of thought running side-by-side, the College chapel service, and the place or building called the Chapel.

We begin with the former.

Sacred time, question-mark.

I have not combed the files but i feel certain i can say that from the 1870s until 1969-70 there was daily chapel, early on five days a week, later just four. Men and women sat separately in the Memorial Chapel until 1951, when mixed seating was permitted. And thanks to the Zimmerman’s we have a picture of Memorial Chapel right here, and if somebody would just pass it around, you’ll have some idea what that old building looked like.

Any rate, student monitors took attendance at chapel, too many cuts meant fines. The faculty stared down at the students from the choir loft, senior professors seated in the front rows, juniors to the back.

When i went to my first chapel, like a good boy i sat in the back row and after it was over i had one big question. Wa-was this really chapel? There was the opening hymn of course, but where, where were the other elements? Prayer, prayers, bible reading, a short meditation. I soon concluded that though the event bore the title of chapel, it was more truthfully, an assembly bringing together students, faculty, and second-floor Galpin administrators. It was not directed so much toward nurturing my soul as it was to my mind and the cause of community enhancement. On the rare occasions when the Trustees might be present, i noticed that scripture and, and the prayer were quietly added and President Lowry usually spoke. (laughter) Was it his way of telling them, we really do chapel here. (more laughter)

Speakers, speakers included of course students, faculty, the occasional administrator, outside, important outsiders, and about every two or three weeks, President Lowry.

Even in the mid-60s he could count on a robust student audience, while other speakers and programs lost hearers and swelled the ranks at the Shack. (laughter)

Photograph Courtesy of Special Collections, The College of Wooster, Libraries

Although the College was founded in 1866, under the corporate moniker the University of Wooster, it took four years for the newly elected Board of Trustees and a local Executive Committee to raise an adequate endowment to get things started, determine policies for the new organization, choose faculty, and create a building-fund so a structure could be built on campus. Old Main was the first major structure ever built on The College of Wooster campus.

In July of 1867 the Board asked Dr. Henry A. True of Marion, Ohio to act as their general agent, at a salary of $1,200 a year, to lay out the grounds, secure plans, and supervise the erection of buildings. Upon accepting the position Dr. True moved quickly to hire O.S. Kinney, a prominent Chicago architect. Mr. Kinney drew-up plans for a brick and mortar building that the College’s Board favored and formally accepted in October of 1867. Mr. Kinney was paid $1,400 for his architectural work. The building he designed would be formally named “Old Main”, but students would sarcastically nickname the structure, the “Bitters Bottle” in later years and many towns people would call it that too.

Along with his blueprints for the building he drew a colored rendering of how the building was intended to look when finished. Lucy L. Notestein, in her book, Wooster of the Middle West, described this lithograph on page 25:

Colored prints of the proposed building were made in quantity and distributed through the synods to aid in the canvass for the endowment. They showed an imposing, red brick building with a central shaft five stories high, a mansard roof surmounted by a tower, and with supporting wings. A fountain played in the foreground, and groups of students passed up and down the walks. How impressive this print was over the State it is hard to say; yet it stirred local pride. Many a farmer in the county framed the picture and hung it in his darkened parlor along with the yard of pansies and the large ovals of his deceased grandmother and grandfather.

Thanks to the Library of Congress Digital Collections Prints & Photographs Online Catalog we can view the same colored print that was distributed across Wayne County and Ohio in the late 1860s.

Original architect's lithographic print of proposed building for the University of Wooster.

• On February 6, 1868 local newspapers carried advertisements announcing that the University of Wooster would be receiving bids for several contracts to erect a grand building.
• March of 1868 it was necessary to have water for building purposes. They sunk a well on campus but came up empty. John Kauke came up with the idea of using water from a spring located at what is now the corner of Bever and Spring streets by laying a 1,850 foot pipe going up a 105 foot elevation from the spring to the campus grounds. He forced the water uphill by installing a hydraulic ram. After the construction of the building was complete the water supplied by this pipe would later drive the fountain installed in front of Old Main. Although, the fountain was a short-lived campus adornment as it was reported that the supply pipe used was too small and chronic clogging and recurring repairs exhausted the patience of Mr. Kauke, and he eventually ordered the hydraulic ram sold and the long pipe from the spring to campus torn out.
• On June 30, 1868 the cornerstone was laid at the southeast corner of the building by Reverend John Robinson of Ashland, Ohio who was serving as President of the Board of Trustees.
• By July, the third story began to show on steadily rising building.
  On October 5,1868 the Executive Committee were ready to grant the contract for plastering of the walls and “deafening of the floors.”
• By January 1, 1869 the central five-story shaft was up and the slate roof on, all the windows were installed and the building was finally completely enclosed and protected from the elements. The building was a slightly smaller version than the architect originally showed: the wings shown in his plan were not built. This was likely a decision based on the amount of money available at the time.
• In October of 1869 at a meeting of the Board of Trustees the chapel inside the building was given the official title of “Kauke Chapel” in honor of John H. Kauke who had given $4,000 to the building fund and spent almost a year-and-half of his life to superintending the construction of the building.
• From October of 1869 through August of 1870 the finishing touches were put into the building: varnishing the woodwork, painting at a contract price of $2,400, and installation of a heating apparatus that consisted of five steam boilers with direct and indirect radiation at a cost of $9,100.
• September 7, 1870 Old Main was formally opened to students after the dedication ceremony to open the University of Wooster. After all the hoopla of the University’s grand opening there were 34 students who signed-up to attend the first classes offered by the school.

Photograph Courtesy of Special Collections, The College of Wooster, Libraries

People in town started to notice the building, it was a massive structure even without the wings and many regarded it as “uncommonly tall.” Furthermore a giant building, placed on a hilltop, gave it an even greater allusion of height. It literally towered over the trees, all the surrounding landscape, and the city of Wooster. Many people in town started to wish the University had spent money to build the wings onto the building and felt the wings might have helped to give the five-story central shaft and it’s tower the allusion of a lower skyline.

Photograph Courtesy of Special Collections, The College of Wooster, Libraries

The great mansard roof making a fifth story was a veritable lumber yard in its mass of material. It was never used, not ever served any purpose, save to add to the strain of wind on the walls and to lighten the sky with a mass of flame when the end finally came. Why the architect and Board ever agreed on building such a sky-reacher would be hard now for anyone to explain.

Document Courtesy of Special Collections, The College of Wooster, Libraries

Photograph Courtesy of Special Collections, The College of Wooster, Libraries

Interior classroom of Old Main. Photograph Courtesy of Special Collections, The College of Wooster Libraries.

Notestein disclosed in the chapter notes of her book that the top of Old Main’s tower was structurally damaged in a storm during 1892 and was not repaired which made it a potentially dangerous structure on campus. The College did not rectify the situation until the Spring of 1900 when they finally decided to remove the hazardous damaged top from Old Main.

Photograph Courtesy of Special Collections, The College of Wooster, Libraries

The architect intended that a clock be installed in those positions on the tower. However, it took many years for a clock face to actually be installed on the tower. Exactly when a clock face was installed is unknown but thanks to a famous student prank we know the clock faces were still empty by the Spring of 1874.

Apparently some students sick of looking at the empty space on the tower decided to add their own artwork to it. The people awoke one Spring morning in 1874 and saw a huge black and white drawing of a donkey’s head which had magically appeared overnight on the face of the university tower. So, all these little facts help to date a number of the pictures as 1870s photographs.

After a mere 31 years of use, the end of life for Old Main came on December 11, 1901 when fire engulfed the great structure and reduced it to rubble. Since there are always people who want to see the carnage and destruction of the fire one more time, here’s a YouTube video that has a montage of images related to the Old Main fire for all those who want to walk on the subversive side:

University is Burning! YouTube video

If you want to download a copy of the Old Main Lithograph from the Library of Congress Digital Collections Prints & Photographs Online Catalog here’s the link:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006677688/

Wallace Moorehead Welty ©2001 Nancy Welty Clark

In Wooster, Welty drew plans for a number of well-known local area people and their properties between 1919 and 1920: Joseph W. Hooke-1105 Quinby Ave., George Blake-1320 Quinby Ave., Dr. Edgar C. Reed-SE Corner of Quinby and Wayne Ave., Dr. George W. Ryall-324 N. Market St., William Annat-558 N. Market St., Nancy J. Platter-College Ave., Robert C. Taylor-428 N. Bever St., W.R. Curry-1152 Quinby Ave., Bert M. Bevington-1044 Quinby Ave., and Mrs. Alvin Rich-1118 Quinby Ave.

Original landscape plans drawn for a flower garden on the property of Mrs. Alvin Rich, located at what is today 1118 Quinby Ave. in Wooster, OH

While he was in town, he also did a few landscape designs for a few of the Wooster city schools: Wooster High School, Beall Ave. School, Bowman St. School, Pittsburgh Ave. School, and the Walnut St. School.

Small landscaping sketch for the Pittsburgh Ave. School in Wooster, OH