Notes from my Knapsack 6-27-24

Notes from my Knapsack 6-27-24
Jeff Gill

A "Million Dollar Year" with a century of implications
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1924 was perhaps the most remarkable year in Granville history since 1805, and would not be matched until possibly 2022.

Even Intel coming to the area has not (yet) had the direct impact on the immediate visual and functional landscape of Our Fayre Village that 1924 had, and still haves.

In fact, looking at why the "Granville Times" newspaper called that year a "Million Dollar" occasion, and back when a million dollars was [cough] a large sum of money, it's hard to imagine clearly what it was like before then.

Swasey Chapel up atop the hill was dedicated, anchoring the campus and creating a landmark for miles around pointing to Granville. Two new dormitories on the East Quad were going up, signaling larger changes in the student population of Denison University.

In the heart of the village, the Baptist state offices, now our village hall, were going up even as a new bank building, now Park National, was being completed on the other end of that block on Broadway.

Just to the east, the Sinnett House was moved off of Broadway to make room for a new library, not finished in this remarkable year but under way; a little further east on the other side of the main thoroughfare, Granville was getting a new high school on Granger Street, now almost 30 years gone.

And in between, where once stood the Granville Female College, now demolished, rose The Granville Inn. It would be dedicated with a great celebration on June 26, 1924. Costing over $600,000 at the time, adjusted for inflation would make that more like $11,000,000 today. Capping off that expenditure of effective millions, John Sutphin Jones also built a fine golf course just east of the village, west of his country home the Bryn Du Mansion. 1924 was truly a "Million Dollar Year."

I invite you to try to imagine Granville without Swasey overhead, no Frank Packard library or inn along Broadway, or the two major buildings of the core downtown block built that year. Erase them in your imagination. True, we still have the four churches, and there's still education going on atop College Hill, but the Greek Revival style is a bit more dominant at St. Luke's and the Avery-Downer House, and you can ask if our community has the vitality it has taken to preserve even those two buildings if all the other activity had not come to pass.

Earlier historians like William Utter and Jamie Hale have noted how it was only a few years earlier that electricity to the village, and a public sewer system, had started to make Granville a more salubrious location to live. There are hints in the record that our local coal magnate had made such civic infrastructure a condition before he spent his money to build the inn and support the fine new library. In the history of local development, which comes first? Just as water is key to industrial and residential development today, so was the addition of what in 1920 was still a new and controversial step to electrify and make more flushable our community.

The Granville Inn will celebrate a century this month; that occasion also reminds us to think together about the century ahead, and what future Granville residents couldn't imagine our village without.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; there's a story behind every building worth learning and telling. What building can't you imagine living without? Tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.