From Woody's Couch

(In celebration of the University Archives’ upcoming 50th Anniversary in 2015, we bring you “The Twelve Days of Buckeyes”. This is day three in a series of 12 blog posts highlighting the people who were instrumental in the creation and growth of the Archives.)

When University officials first asked Joseph Bradford to join the faculty, he turned them down. Thank goodness they named him an instructor anyway, or the Archives might not now have photos of the University from its early days.

Bradford was actually a graduate of OSU, earning a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1883. He was a draftsman with the Pennsylvania Railroad when he was asked by the College of Engineering to organize a course in engineering drawing. Having no interest in being an instructor, he declined the offer. Nevertheless, the Board of Trustees named him an instructor in mechanical and freehand drawing in 1885, with a salary of $1,000 a year.

As a member of the faculty, he taught engineering drawing and architecture, and pioneered instruction in photography, with the first course in “picture-making” offered in the United States in 1890. By 1903 he had published “Photographic Notes for Students in the Ohio State University,” which explained the technical aspects of photography and gave helpful hints on how to be a better photographer.

In 1911, Bradford was named University Architect, and he built an impressive portfolio in that area, designing 40 buildings on campus. His work includes such landmarks as Derby Hall, Jennings Hall (then the Botany and Zoology Building), the Kuhn Honors and Scholars building (then the president’s residence), Starling-Loving Hospital, and Sullivant Hall.

But his love of photography is what makes him special to the Archives.

In 1931, Bradford received approval from the Board of Trustees to start a Photographic History Unit in the Department of Photography. The unit’s purpose was to “make a complete photographic pictorial record of the progress of the University, its departments, and changes in its personnel,” according to a February 1931 Alumni Monthly article.

Bradford, who had been associated with the University since 1877 when he matriculated as a freshman, was made Emeritus Professor in 1932 and at that point took full charge of the Photo History Division. Bradford worked tirelessly organizing, filing and cataloging historical University photographs. He collected the earliest images from local photographers while also soliciting photographs from University staff and former students. By 1935, Bradford had accumulating about 16,000 prints and negatives. This collection was to eventually become the beginning of the University Archives’ photographs collection.

Bradford also used his own campus photographs, even coloring some of them by hand. He was well known for giving his “Campus Memories” presentation, a Lantern slide show, which highlighted the early history of the University and included photos of buildings, geography, athletics, events, faculty and classrooms. You can see a sampling of the images from his Campus Memories slide show on the Archives’ Flickr gallery.

Bradford died in 1944. However, the Department of Photography continued to add to the collection he had worked so hard to build, photographing the buildings, faculty and grounds of the University.

In 1972 the photographic archives became part of the University Archives and now contains more than two million photographs depicting the history of the University from 1870 to the present time. Because of Bradford’s love of photography and his obvious dedication to the University, we can witness the enormous growth of a campus through his extensive collection of photos that are housed here at the Archives.