From Woody's Couch

Today’s featured Buckeye spent his career shaping the development of the OSU campus and his retirement documenting its physical history. John Herrick had such an influence on the look of this campus that a key thoroughfare was named for him.

John Henry Herrick was born to Henry and Mabel Kelly Herrick on July 10, 1904, in Twinsburg, Ohio. A three-time graduate of OSU (BA ’28, MA ’36, PhD ’44), Herrick, with the exception of a few years spent as a teacher and administrator in Shaker Heights and Cincinnati, spent most of his career at OSU as well.

He initially joined the faculty of the Bureau of Educational Research and Service in 1947. In 1956 he was named Director of the Office of Campus Planning, a position he held until 1967. In this capacity he created a campus plan that was hugely influential to other universities in determining the futures of their campuses. After stepping down from that position, he continued to serve as a professor of educational policy and leadership until his retirement in 1972.

 

The above accomplishments would form a career of which anyone might be proud, but John Herrick wasn’t finished. In 1970, he conducted the research for a book titled The Ringing Grooves of Change for the University’s Centennial Celebration. This sparked an interest in the projects that would take up most of his free post-retirement time: researching and writing histories of campus buildings, the Oval, Mirror Lake Hollow, and campus planning at OSU.

 

Herrick spent countless hours at the archives researching this history, and the result now serves as an important part of the University Archives’ reference collection. The five-volume history of campus buildings has been digitized by the Knowlton School of Architecture as the Herrick Archives and is available for use by anyone in the world.

 

Furthering his legacy of service to OSU, Herrick served as co-chair for the University’s fund raising campaign in 1985. The campaign was so successful that it surpassed its goal of $350 million in five years by raising $401.2 million in four. It was, at the time, the largest amount of money ever raised by a public institution.

 

In 1989, the Campus Loop Road, a key element in his campus master plan, was renamed Herrick Drive in his honor. Herrick died one year later in 1990 at the age of 85.