Ogden Hall Featured On 2016 Miami University Ornament

BY ALTHEA E. PERLEY
Miami University journalism student
This year's limited-edition holiday ornament, offered by the Miami University Alumni Association, features Ogden Hall.

Miami first sold an ornament in 1989. It featured Old Main, Miami first campus building, which sat where Harrison Hall is today. “As Miami's first, and arguably most iconic building, we thought this was a good place to start the collection,” said Ray Mock, executive director for Alumni Affairs.

Since 1981 the Alumni Association has been working with the vendor ChemArt of Lincoln, R.I., which also creates the annual White House ornament, to manufacture these pieces of art.

Each year the ornament is decided by March, then several photos are taken of the chosen building from different angles. After that, the artwork is sent to ChemArt to design and produce the ornaments.

“Only 400 ornaments are purchased per building, and last year they sold 356 of the 2015 ornament, Lewis Place,” said Kim Tavares, senior director of University Advancement Communications.

Ogden Hall was third men's dorm

This year’s ornament, of Ogden Hall, celebrates a building completed in 1924. It was the third dormitory for men to be built after Elliott and Stoddard Halls. The hall was constructed thanks to the largest donation at the time, from the estate of Laura Ogden Whaling, in memory of her brother George C. Ogden, an 1863 Miami grad. George Ogden was a Cincinnati physician and poet. Laura Ogden’s demands for the new building were very specific; to meet them, the gymnasium at the site at the time had to be picked up and moved 522 feet to the east. It originally cost $330,000 to build Ogden. The building was renovated in 1999 for $6.1 million to add Bell Tower Place Dining Hall.

Steeped in legends

Not your average residence hall, Ogden Hall is implicated in two Miami mysteries.

One relates to a legend that Laura Ogden's estate called for a wall to be built around the dorm to keep it private. To skirt that demand, Miami instead built a wall under Ogden, according to rumor. In truth, the wall under the building was the foundation of the gymnasium that was moved to appease Laura Ogden. So the legend -- that the “wall” was built to keep men out of Ogden after it was turned into a women’s residence hall -- was a bit off.

Ogden Hall is also tied to the Reid Hall murder. On May 9, 1959, resident adviser Roger Sayles was shot and killed while attempting to stop a fight between two men in Reid. As Sayles died, his assailant fled to a phone booth on the second floor of Ogden Hall, where he ended his own life with a shot through the head. Reid Hall was torn down in 2008 to build the Farmer School of Business.

Ornaments for sale

This year’s ornament costs $17. Also available are ornaments of the Armstrong Student Center, Murstein Alumni Center, Oxford College, and Peabody Hall, at $12 each. Proceeds support alumni programming.
“The best-selling ornament has been Kumler Chapel. Our suspicion is this has sold well because many Miami Mergers were married there,” Mock said.

Ornaments can be purchased at https://goo.gl/0mKOGH.
Next year's ornament will depict King Library to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Photo: Ogden Hall sits in the Academic Quad of Miami's campus in Oxford. -- Photo by Miami University