Qualla: Ohio University

Ohio University: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dan Keck from Ohio, CC0. Two townships of land were set aside specifically for it. That was the deal Manasseh Cutler negotiated with the Confederation Congress in 1787 - the Ohio Company of Associates would not buy land in the Northwest Territory unless the contract included a reservation of public land sufficient to fund a university. The two contiguous townships near the future Athens, Ohio, were the result. Settlers arrived from Marietta in 1797 by way of the Ohio and Hocking rivers to scout the location. The school was officially chartered as Ohio University on February 18, 1804 - the first university in the former Northwest Territory, three years before Ohio statehood was even a decade old. It granted its first two bachelor's degrees in 1815. Two hundred and twenty years later, Ohio University enrolls more than 36,000 students across its main Athens campus and five regional campuses, and the same College Green that the founders laid out remains the campus's center.

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Image: Dan Keck from Ohio | CC0

Ohio University: Founders, Charter, and the Closure

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Manasseh Cutler - a New England minister, physician, and botanist - and Rufus Putnam, the Revolutionary War general who led the founding of Marietta, are credited as the university's two founders. Putnam was a charter trustee; Cutler wrote the founding documents. The early years ...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Ohio University: The College Green

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Orchysterium, CC BY-SA 4.0. The College Green is the campus's historic quadrangle, laid out on the model of an English or New England town green. Cutler Hall stands at its center, with Wilson Hall to its left and McGuffey Hall to its right - the three buildings forming a Federal-style ensemble that has appe...

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Image: Orchysterium | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ohio University: The Great Society and May 1970

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dan Keck from Ohio, CC0. Two political moments mark the modern campus. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson came to the College Green and used the phrase 'Great Society' publicly for the first time - the speech became foundational to his domestic agenda. Six years later, on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard killed...

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Image: Dan Keck from Ohio | CC0

Ohio University: The Ridges and the Cherry Trees

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OUPD, CC BY-SA 3.0. Above the campus to the west, on a high ridge across the Hocking River, stand the Victorian buildings of what was once the Athens State Hospital - a massive Kirkbride Plan mental asylum that operated from 1874 to 1993. Ohio University acquired the complex in the 1980s and renamed...

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Image: OUPD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ohio University: The Marching 110, the Athletics, and the Bobcats

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit George23520, CC0. Ohio University's intercollegiate athletic teams are the Bobcats, charter members of the Mid-American Conference since 1946. The football team plays at Peden Stadium, the oldest active stadium in the MAC, a designated Ohio Historical Site. The Marching 110 is the official marchin...

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Image: George23520 | CC0

Ohio University: Flying Over the Old Campus

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Garden Sprite, CC0. From the air, Ohio University reads as a layered campus growing out from the small, perfect rectangle of the College Green. The original Federal-style brick buildings cluster on the green's edges. South of the green, the Hocking River bends around the campus, with athletic facili...

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Image: Garden Sprite | CC0