- Gone, But Not Forgotten?
Whittier College (Whittier, California) asked me a few years ago to research and compile a list of that Southern California campus’ structures of greatest historic significance. The effort was part of the Historic Campus Architecture Project (HCAP), the first ever national architecture and landscape inventory compiled for independent college and university campuses. The national Council of Independent Colleges posted the resulting database.
I had previously researched and written “Whittier College: The First Century on the Poet Campus,” a photo-illustrated centennial history. As an alumni and a college employee, I knew the campus and its history. I also had served on the city of Whittier’s Historic Resources Commission during a key period when the city first made available Mills Act property tax reductions to residents who own historic houses. I had walked the streets to take inventory of historic structures, and received a tutorial on historic architectural styles and the characteristics of historic buildings typically eligible for historic preservation.
In the survey for Whittier College and the Council of Independent Colleges, I identified nine buildings – all but two built in a Mediterranean style popular in the 1920s – as historically significant: 1) Diehl Hall, opened as Addison Naylor Hall in 1918 as a science facility. It was renamed in 1997 for Richard and Billie Deihl, donors who made an upgrade possible for the Modern Languages program headquartered there today; 2) The Aubrey Wardman Residence Hall and Scholars Center, opened in 1924 thanks to a successful pioneer of the local oil and telephone industries. Originally a residence hall, it has added offices and classrooms. 3) The Wardman Art Center, opened as the Wardman Gymnasium in 1925, now remodeled inside for the Art Department. 4) The Wardman House, designed by the noted Los Angeles architectural firm Webber, Staunton and Spalding. It was built for the same namesake benefactor in 1927 and donated for use as the President’s House upon the Wardmans’ passing during the 1970s. 5) Platner Hall, built in 1928 with funding from David H. and Jennie M. Platner as a women’s dormitory and renovated in the 1970s for faculty offices.
Also: 6) Campbell Residence Hall, built on campus during the 1920s. Originally, it opened as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Entomological Laboratory, working closely with the Whittier District Fruit Exchange to eradicate menaces to local citrus crops during the decades that Whittier was a agricultural center. Closed in 1961, it was turned over to the college for use as a dormitory. 7) The O.T. Mendenhall Administration Building, built in 1928 by an Elks lodge that went broke during the Great Depression. It was acquired by the college in 1936. 8) The Broadoaks School Building, one of only two of the facilities not in Mediterranean style. Built in 1948, it includes Streamline Moderne, concrete, glass, steel and stucco elements typical of some post-World War II construction. 9) The Lou Henry Hoover Classroom Building, another building not in the Mediterranean style, was built in 1948 in a more eclectic modern style. It is a tribute to the former First Lady, who attended a 1880s forerunner of the college and returned during the 1930s and 1940s as an active member of the board of trustees.
But to me, the most interesting structures at Whittier College were not buildings. They were the John Greenleaf Whittier Monument and “The Rock.” The monument was erected in 1911 by community subscription and memorialized the 19th Century Quaker Abolitionist poet for whom the college and the town were named. My research uncovered newspaper accounts that declared a time capsule was sealed inside. But the college’s efforts to confirm that were unsuccessful until 2008, when the modest brick structure once topped by an electric light was summarily demolished to make way for an expansion of the Student Union. Sadly, the “time capsule” was poorly sealed and contained mostly newspapers and other perishable items that had, indeed, perished.
The Campus Inn expansion that prompted that demolition also significantly encroached upon and today overshadows The Rock, a boulder brought to campus in 1912 by students who proudly hauled it from the San Gabriel Mountains by horse and wagon. Embedded in concrete, The Rock has served as a symbol of the permanence and solidity of the college to generations of students and alumni. But in a recent edition of the alumni magazine – also called “The Rock” – the current Whittier president put up a trial balloon for the idea of “modernizing” by moving or removing and replacing that symbolic stone to a more “convenient” location on campus.
The Campus Inn itself also seems to have lost one of its most historic associations in the latest remodel. Once it was the “Walter F. Dexter Student Center.” That name honored the college president of the 1920s and early 1930s who did the most to set the institution on an enduring course. Dexter was President Herbert F. Hoover’s 1932 campaign biographer and recruited Lou Hoover to the college’s board. He also later was himself elected statewide as California’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Last time I looked, his name was nowhere to be found on the hulking new student center. Alas!
Clarity Research 