Clarence Ward Collection

The Clarence Ward Collection provides detail on Clarence Ward’s activities as an architectural consultant and on his administration of the Allen Memorial Art Museum. Information also exists here on the debate of the system of faculty governance at Oberlin College. Consisting of correspondence, memoranda, and other printed materials, this collection is organized into ten series.

The correspondence and diaries series provide the richest insight into Ward’s personal and professional activities. Ward’s work as an architectural consultant for churches in the Midwest United States and New England is also documented in the correspondence series, and is occasionally enhanced by accompanying drawings and photographs. While most of the correspondence details Ward’s work for churches in Northern Ohio, a reasonable amount of material exists on the First Congregational Church of Benzonia, Michigan. Letters from Oberlin College President Ernest Hatch Wilkins, and Cincinnati architect Charles F. Cellarus further highlight Ward’s involvement in Oberlin College’s architectural development. The diaries by Helen Eshbaugh Ward, beginning in the year of her marriage to Clarence Ward in 1907 and continuing into the 1960s, cover the Wards' trips to Europe during which Clarence studied and documented medieval architecture.

The series related to the Allen Memorial Art Museum and Oberlin College Administration details Ward’s administrative role as director of the Art Museum (1917-1948), and his role in helping to formulate policy on the Oberlin College campus. Of special interest is material regarding the Oberlin College Board of Trustees’ initiative to change the Faculty Council’s jurisdiction over the appointment process in 1947. Ward’s correspondence with members of the Board of Trustees, most notably Walter K. Bailey, provides valuable insight on the continuous debate over faculty governance at Oberlin College.

Overall, this collection is thin and uneven. Little information exists on Clarence Ward’s personal and professional development or on his academic teaching and scholarship. Random Reminiscences: The Connecticut Boyhood of Clarence Ward (1996), located in the Biographical Series, provides some insight into his early life. Ward’s professional education and career development is also very much under-documented. (Such historical materials may still be held by members of the Ward family.) An exception is Ward’s correspondence with Elizabeth Prentiss (widow of Dudley P. Allen) and her secretary, Anna Held, which provides some detail on the personal activities, health, thoughts, and travels of Ward, his wife Helen Eshbaugh, and Elizabeth Prentiss. Another source of personal information on the Wards is a transcript of an interview with Helen E. Ward by her grandson, Andrew Spencer Ward, in 1976.

The balance of the collection is made up of writings, sermons and talks, and non-textual materials. Portraits and family photographs dating from roughly 1900 through the 1970s make up only a small portion of the series for photographs and drawings. The rest of the photographs are especially rich sources for the study of North American and medieval European architecture. Photographs by British photographer James Austin of French cathedrals and churches comprise five folders. The series also includes original prints used to illustrate E.A. Ruggles’ Small Stone Houses of the Cotswold District, published in Cleveland in 1931.

The North American photographic material predominantly comprises professional architectural photographs by I.T. (Ihna Thayer) Frary (1873-1965) of Cleveland. His published works include Early Homes of Ohio, Thomas Jefferson: Architect and Builder, Early American Doorways, They Built the Capitol, and Ohio in Homespun and Calico. The series includes photographs solicited by Ward for an exhibition of Frary’s work entitled “Early Architecture in Ohio,” as well as Ward’s typed catalogue for the exhibition, ca. 1944. The larger part of Frary’s work in the series comprise 8” x 10” gelatin silver prints that document architecture in twenty American states east of the Mississippi, as well as a small number of photographs taken in Quebec Province in Canada. These represent a major effort in the 1930s and early 1940s to extensively document American antebellum architecture, including vernacular structures, particularly from the Colonial period.

In 1971 Clarence Ward gifted approximately 6,000 large-format negatives of Medieval and American architecture to the National Gallery of Art. Nearly all of the negatives were produced by Arthur Ewing Princehorn, Oberlin College photographer, under Ward's direction in the 1920s and 1930s. (The Clarence Ward Archive at the National Gallery can be accessed from ArtStor.) Certain of the negatives were printed and mounted for the use of the Art Department. Many of these prints still reside with the department, while those that had been professionally matted by the Allen Memorial Art Museum for an exhibit were transferred to the Archives (see the Princehorn Collection for a list of the negatives and prints).

Of particular interest in this collection is one of Ward’s rotating lantern slide projectors, until recently installed in the projection booth in the lecture room in the Art Department. These machines, invented by Charles Besemer Company as early as 1916, were a precursor to the modern 35mm slide carousel. They mechanically moved lantern slides in and out of position between the lamp and the lens of the projector, and could be operated with the touch of a button or remotely from the lectern. Ward used two machines in the projection booth for comparison of two images at a time, a common practice in art history pedagogy in the modern period. These projectors were a departure from earlier existing projectors that required manually inserting slides one by one into the slide carrier, and multiple slides could not be loaded ahead of time. The rotating projectors were installed with the opening of the original Art Buidling by Çass Gilbert in 1917. Additional projectors were installed in the 1937 wing designed by Clarence Ward, in keeping with Cass Gilbert's design.