For an independent study project this summer, photography and journalism double major Scott Allison '11 took his Canon 7D camera and set out to recreate campus and town scenes shot by well-known Oxford photographer Frank R. Snyder (1875-1958), some nearly 100 years ago. First, Allison studied the Snyder photos housed in Miami University Libraries' archives. He then selected several to reproduce, being careful to shoot at the same time of day, at the same angle, and with lighting as similar to Snyder's as possible. The following are a few of the many photos comprising Allison's project, titled "From the Archives: Miami University and Oxford, Ohio, Then and Now." The accompanying text comes primarily from Miami University, 1809-2009: Bicentennial Perspectives; Phillip Shriver's Miami University: A Personal History; and Walter Havighurst's The Miami Years.

Construction crew in front of Elliott Hall

In 1913

Officially named Washington and Clinton Hall when students moved into the newly completed dormitory in 1829, the dorm was commonly called Northeast Building, later shortened to North Hall. Miami's first residence hall is now the oldest building on the Oxford campus. Built for $7,000, it was "plain but strong," with a wood-burning stove in each room, which students used to heat their rooms and cook their meals. Patterned after Yale's oldest building, Connecticut Hall, it was renovated into neo-Georgian style in 1937. It was renamed after Charles Elliott, Miami professor of Greek and logic 1849-1863, who was the hall's proctor.

In 2011

During the summer of 2011, Elliott was renovated once again, as was Stoddard, with a more efficient utility system, additional electrical outlets, energy-efficient windows, and new plumbing and bathroom fixtures. Geothermal heating and cooling also were installed and low-flow plumbing fixtures added. Today's students now enter their rooms with electronic ID cards. They simply tap the card to the key plate to unlock the door.

Entrance to Miami University –

in 1900, 1909, and 2011

The entrance to the northwest side of the Oxford campus is at the corner of Campus Avenue and High Street. It is also where Slant Walk begins, a walk that thousands of students have traveled for nearly 200 years.

On that corner in 1909, the new Centennial Memorial Gate was erected in honor of the 100th anniversary of the university's founding. That gate came down in 1973 when the Phi Delta Theta Gate went up to mark the fraternity's 125th anniversary. The left side of the new structure retained one of the tablets from its predecessor.

Of the walkway, now as sacred to Miami tradition as red brick, Walter Havighurst writes in The Miami Years:

"Oxford's oldest and most enduring thoroughfare was never planned, marked, or designated.

"First known as the Slanting Path, it was the students' bee-line from the old college to the High Street taverns and the Church Street sanctums. Muddy, dusty, leaf-strewn and ice-crusted, it was trodden in all seasons.

"The first improvement was a surface of sand and a grilled crossing to keep livestock out of the hedged campus.

"The first gateway was a pair of iron posts at the portal. As years passed, the Slant Walk landmark kept changing. In 1902 the college well was boarded over and its tilted sweep removed. A 1909 Centennial Gate gave way to a Williamsburg-style entrance in 1973.

"Old Main itself was replaced by the new Harrison Hall in sesquicentennial 1959. After 40 years of bubbling in the shade of huge old elms, Thobe's fieldstone fountain was supplanted by the stone circle bench of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.

"College fads and fashions, modes and manners go on changing as in generations past."

Alumni Library then, Alumni Hall now

1910 (inside)

Guy Potter Benton, president of Miami 1902-1911, "recognized that an institution of higher learning was only as good as its library." (Miami University, 1809-2009: Bicentennial Perspectives) In 1906 he approached steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, well known for helping to finance the building of public libraries and inspired to do so by John Shaw Billings, director of the New York Public Library and Miami Class of 1857.

For Miami's Alumni Library, Carnegie agreed to fund half of the $80,000 cost, with the stipulation that Oxford residents also be allowed to use the library. Benton spent the next three years raising money from alumni and private donors. The central portion, with its stacks, reading rooms, and 70-foot-high rotunda, opened its doors in March 1910.

2011 (inside)

The statue of George Washington in the foreground is courtesy of Samuel Spahr Laws, an 1848 Miami graduate, who in 1920 presented to the university one of the five existing bronze duplicate castings of Jean-Antoine Houdon's life-size marble statue of Washington, installed in the rotunda of Virginia's Capitol in 1796. (Miami's CELTUA Web page)

1910 (outside)

Conceived as the most lavish building on campus, one of its many notable features is a Rookwood tile interpretation of the university seal on the north exterior gable, as visible today as when it was new.

The library's initial 28,000 volumes were moved from old Harrison Hall/Old Main. In 1924 an east wing was added containing a main reference and reading room and a reserve book room. Additional stacks were added in 1930, 1949, and 1958, and a west wing was built in 1952.

Marion Boyd Havighurst, daughter of a Western College president, wife of English professor Walter Havighurst, and a Miami English professor in her own right, wrote the first modern mystery novel set in a college library, Murder in the Stacks. "She began the book in her study carrel in old Alumni Library until she frightened herself so badly that she continued writing at home." (Frances McClure, assistant to the curator, Special Collections 1985-94, in Miami University, 1809-2009: Bicentennial Perspectives)

2011 (outside)

Alumni remained Miami's main library until the construction of King Library in the 1960s and '70s. Then it became a depository for seldom-used book materials and was converted into a building for the architecture department, including the art and architecture library. It was extensively renovated in the early 1990s and the old glass-floored stack areas were removed. The latest addition, the south wing, was added in 1997.

Lewis Place

1904

Although Lewis Place on High Street became Miami's presidential home in 1903, it was actually built in 1839 by Romeo Lewis, Connecticut merchant and a founder of Tallahassee, for his young wife, Jane.

"He built a large home in anticipation of a large family. Though Romeo and Jane Lewis did have children, sadly not one of them survived infancy." (Miami University: A Personal History) Two months after their fourth son, Marcus, died, Romeo died as well. (Ophia Smith, Old Oxford Houses)

Widowed in 1843, for the second time, Jane Lewis remained in the home for 40 years, inviting various family members for long visits, including nephew Philip North Moore, who stayed there while attending Miami. Moore inherited the house and eventually asked university trustees if they would be interested in making it a home for Miami presidents.

"While extensive remodeling was going on, Moore heard that some of the old mantels were being replaced by new ones. That changed his mind about selling the house. He decided to hold the deed and lease the house to the university." After he died in 1929, his heirs sold the house to Miami for $25,000. (Old Oxford Houses)

2011

When the Shrivers arrived in 1965, Lewis Place was being renovated, so they stayed in Grey Gables, built as Western President Boyd's retirement home and later purchased by Miami for a guest house. The Hodges also spent their first year in 2006 in another house while the university modernized Lewis Place once again.

"When Frank Lloyd Wright, perhaps the pre-eminent 20th century American architect, visited Oxford, he was asked which building in Oxford appealed to him the most, and he replied at once, 'Lewis Place.' He thought it singularly beautiful." (Miami University: A Personal History)

McGuffey Memorial

1941

The National Federation of McGuffey Societies dedicated the McGuffey statue, sculpted by Ernest Haswell (on left in photo), at McGuffey Hall in 1941. It was the "consummation of a determined campaign" by Harvey Minnich (on right in photo), a McGuffey Scholar and dean emeritus of the School of Education (dean 1903-1931). The hall and statue are a tribute to William Holmes McGuffey, Miami professor of ancient languages 1826-1836, who wrote the McGuffey Eclectic Readers.

1941 2011

2011

Although Miami's School of Education opened Sept. 10, 1902, as the Ohio State Normal College, McGuffey Hall wasn't built yet. It emerged in three stages between 1909 and 1925.

Normal College made Miami truly coeducational and also attracted older professional students and the university's first African-American students.

The McGuffey Laboratory School, founded in 1910, was the training site for 100 student-teachers each year. The lab school eventually occupied McGuffey's entire south wing where, in the 1930s, the office of its head football coach, Weeb Ewbank '28, was located.

While modernizing the program, Dean Minnich changed the name in 1915 to Teachers College. It was renamed the School of Education in 1928, added "and Allied Professions" in 1977, and became the School of Education, Health, and Society in 2008.

Oxford parade

1919

"In 1810, when the town of Oxford was surveyed, no roads led to Oxford, and mail took two weeks to arrive from the established town of Lebanon, 37 miles away." (Miami University, 1809-2009: Bicentennial Perspectives)

Ralph J. McGinnis, Miami's alumni editor in the 1930s, shares many tidbits about the growing village in Oxford Town 1830-1930, published July 4, 1930:

"With the re-opening of the University in 1885, the modern era starts. From then to the present [1930], Oxford has enjoyed a slow growth and modern life has brought the usual improvements of paved streets, electric lights, and fast transportation. The phenomenal growth of Miami, with a student body approximating the population of the Village, has for the second time in history materially affected its prosperity and life.

"The first electric lights were installed in 1889, the saloons went out in 1904, preceded by the Temperance Crusade. The first streets were paved in 1916, and the water system installed in 1894. The tower was erected on the Public Square in 1923." [The water tower was a gathering place for decades of Miami students until it was torn down in 1998.]

2011

"In 1803, a college township was set aside in the almost uninhabited woodlands of northwestern Butler County. In 1810, a year after Miami University was chartered, the Village of Oxford was laid out and the first lots were sold. In the following year, the first school was built and by 1830, with a population of more than 700, the Village of Oxford was incorporated. A charter form of government was adopted in 1960 and a decade later population growth had turned the village into a full-fledged city. The original boundaries of the City consisted of the Mile Square. A number of annexations during recent decades increased the size, resulting in the City currently consisting of approximately six square miles." (City of Oxford website)

Dr. H.M. Moore's house

1909 and 2011

On the southwest corner of West Walnut Street and South Beech, the 103 W. Walnut St. home of Dr. H.M. Moore later served as medical offices. In more recent times, it is one of the many houses in the original Mile Square turned into student rental homes.

Snyder's store

1936

Opened in 1895, Snyder's Art Store was a well-established business on High Street by the time these Miami students gathered by its front windows in 1936.

Describing owner Frank R. Snyder in Oxford Town 1830-1930, Ralph J. McGinnis wrote in 1930, "Mr. Snyder has been in Oxford for 35 years. He came here with his father in 1891 and in 1895 purchased the photographic business, adding the gifts and art shop a short time after. The photographic business was started by E.B. Rogers.

"Mr. Snyder has been a popular photographer in the community for more than a generation. In addition to his regular studio work, he has a large business in finishing amateur work and commercial photography. The gift shop carries a large variety of merchandise and includes school supplies, kodaks, toys, picture frames, and magazines."

2011

Frank R. Snyder eventually passed down the store to his son, Frank K. Snyder '41. It later became Snyder's Hallmark, owned and operated by Frank R.'s granddaughter, Gretchen Snyder McLaughlin '69, and her husband, Jerry.

When Snyder's closed in the spring of 2006, it was Oxford's oldest business. Now filling the spot is Wild Bistro, an Asian cuisine restaurant.

Although his business is gone, many of Frank R. Snyder's photos remain. The Snyder Collection, housed in archives, includes some 4,000 photos of Oxford and Miami life spanning 1897-1955 and can be found online at http://digital.lib.muohio.edu/snyder. To view more of Scott Allison's "From the Archives: Miami University and Oxford, Ohio, Then and Now," go to http://sma-photo.com/snyder.