By Chloe Haught, Spring 2024 University Archives Intern
In spring 2024, for six hours each week, I had the pleasure of interning at the Mahn Center working with Bill Kimok, University Archivist and Records Manager. During this experience I began and completed the processing of two collections—The Cutler Hall Rededication Collection and the Ohio University Pride Center Collection—which were of vastly different sizes and content. However, despite these obvious physical differences in the collections, both projects collectively taught me a great deal about archival work. To read about the processing of the Pride Center collection see my first blog post.
The first collection I processed contained materials detailing the planning and executing of the 1947 rededication of Ohio University’s historic Cutler Hall. Originally built between 1816-1819 Cutler Hall was first known as the College Edifice or the Center Building, and it was renamed Cutler Hall in 1914 to honor one of Ohio University’s founders, Manasseh Cutler. As a scientist, reverend, and statesman, Cutler wore many hats, and, more specifically, his political negotiating skills were instrumental in helping the University’s other founders to acquire land and to create official charters for the purpose of the University and for the ground on which the University would be built.
As the oldest building on OHIO’s campus, Cutler Hall had a long, pragmatically functional past, simultaneously providing classroom space, room for student boarding, and faculty offices during the 120 years before it was rendered virtually uninhabitable and condemned in 1936. However, rather than overseeing the demolition of such an iconic, historic landmark, newly installed Ohio University’s 14th President John Calhoun Baker came to the building’s rescue in 1945 when he decided to have it restored.
As work on the old building progressed, a rededication ceremony was meticulously planned to draw attention to the restoration project; an effort that was led mostly by Ohio University Assistant Professor of Dramatic Arts and Speech Vincent Joseph Jukes. Many of the documents in this collection illustrate the tremendous volume of work that Professor Jukes put into planning the ceremony. He spent most of 1947 contacting broadcasting companies and newspapers for publicity, planning attention-drawing events, coordinating the acquisition of paintings from museums, procuring souvenirs representing the event, and much more.
On October 18-19, 1947, Jukes’s hard labor came to fruition during a weekend of festivities, which included a museum exhibition at Cutler Hall, a student parade, an exhibition football scrimmage at Ohio Stadium, a visit by Ohio Governor Thomas J. Herbert and other University and State of Ohio dignitaries, a student dance, and even the firing of cannons on the College Green. The October 17, 1947 Ohio University Post aptly describes the many events planned for the big day, and many of the highlights of these events were originally recorded live in a 16 millimeter film which was converted to digital format in 2009, and can be viewed by everyone here at this link.
