Why is the Ogletree-Wright-Ivey home important?

Contributed Auburn Villager The Ogletree-Wright-Ivey house was originally home to one of the founders of the city of Auburn and of what is now Auburn University.

Where North Gay Street dead-ends into Drake Avenue just north of downtown Auburn, a shabby old house is nearly obscured by overgrown trees, the grassless yard packed hard by generations of students. This is the Ogletree-Wright-Ivey house, one of two remaining homes belonging to founders of the city of Auburn and Auburn University. The home, now owned by an Auburn University emeritus professor who lives in Taiwan, recently was named one of Alabama's most endangered historical sites for 2009 by the Alabama Historical Commission and the Alabama Trust for Historic Preservation.

Like an old showgirl, the house retains a hint of her former grace. The long front porch across the front of the structure, the pillars and the double front door leading into a center hall all reflect the studied, balanced elegance of Greek Revival architecture, popular in the 1840s when the home was built.

The Greek Revival style blossomed in the mid-1700s after archaeologists began to unearth the ruins of classical Greece, and the style was popularized in the newborn United States by Thomas Jefferson. Architectural pattern books made it possible for homebuilders even on the rough frontier to mimic the symmetry of the finest Greek Revival homes.

Local historian Ralph Draughon Jr., a member of the Alabama Historical Commission, researched the home's history before he nominated the Ogletree-Wright-Ivey house for inclusion on the list of "places in peril."

"You'd be surprised how few people in Auburn know about the home," Draughon said. "Inclusion on the list calls attention to the house on a statewide level, and even outside the state. It doesn't guarantee preservation, but it publicizes the problem."

The house was once the town home of James B. Ogletree, standing on 20 acres that rolled off to the rear of the home. Draughon said Ogletree was a planter, not a merchant, and farmed extensive acreage in what was then rural Macon County, where the new village of Auburn was located.

Ogletree was one of the founders of Auburn in late 1836, part of the group headed by Judge John J. Harper that moved westward to lands recently ceded by the Creek Indian tribes in East Alabama.

In what Southern historians have dubbed a "planter migration," the inter-related Harper clan helped push settlement west as they moved together to the frontier. According to Draughon, Ogletree's sister was Judge Harper's wife, and the group consisted of the 36-year-old Ogletree, his wife and children, the Harpers and their eight sons and three daughters, the judge's mother and several of his half-bothers along with some Harris County, Ga., neighbors, quite a few slaves and livestock.

The Ogletree-Wright-Ivey house is one of only two surviving homes owned and occupied by Auburn's original settlers. The other is Pebble Hill, the home of Nathaniel J. Scott, also related to Judge Harper.

Pebble Hill, built in 1847, is now home to Auburn University's Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities.

The Auburn Heritage Association purchased the home in 1974, and then had trouble raising money to complete renovations. AuburnBank acquired title, and donated the building�in which more than $100,000 had been invested�to the university.

Like Judge Harper and Scott, Ogletree was a confirmed Methodist. Draughon said he is first recorded in published records in 1837 as a member of the Methodist "society," the preliminary organization of a group that wished to form a recognized Methodist congregation.

The first surviving church register, dated 1850, listed Ogletree as a member, and he participated that year in the quarterly conference that initiated plans to erect a new church building. The church still stands today, although altered in 1899.

In 1856, Draughon said, Ogletree joined in another Methodist enterprise of longstanding benefit to the town of Auburn�the chartering of East Alabama Male College, a Methodist institution that was the forerunner of Auburn University. Ogletree served on the first board of trustees.

At the end of the Civil War the village of Auburn was destitute, and no one had any money. Ogletree once contributed two and a half bushels of corn to help pay for the services of a Methodist minister, Draughon said.

No one knows for sure the precise date when Ogletree built his town house. After the Georgia settlers arrived in the area, they built log cabins in what was then wilderness. Draughon said an international economic crisis, the Panic of 1837, lasted well into the 1840s and undoubtedly discouraged building more elaborate homes.

By tradition, Draughon said, the home dates from the late 1840s. By that time, Ogletree was probably comparatively well-off. According to Draughon, the U.S. census of 1860 showed Ogletree owning 63 slaves who raised mostly cotton and corn on 1,000 cultivated acres. Another 600 acres remained unimproved.

One June 2, 1860, Ogletree and his wife Mary sold their town house and its 20 acres for $4,000 to Adam Hardin, who kept the property for a year and a half before he sold it in 1861 to W.S.J. Lampkin for $2,700. By that time the United States was rent by a bitter civil war, which Draughon said might account for the precipitous drop in the property's value.

The Methodist register noted that Ogletree "died in peace April 1866," and Draughon said he was probably laid to rest in Pine Hill cemetery. Because of the poverty of the times, Ogletree lies in an unmarked grave.

Lampkin owned the home until 1887, when William Wilmot Wright bought the house and moved his large family to town, adding a second story to accommodate his brood. Wright, too, played an important part in Auburn's history.

His grist mill at the site of today's Chewacla park was a popular recreation spot for more than a century. In buggies, on bicycles or on foot, Auburn residents traveled down Wright's Mill Road to swim and fish and picnic at Wright's Mill, perched precariously besides a picturesque waterfall.

Wright's descendants provided two mayors of Auburn, two presidents of rival local banks, two postmasters, civic officials and a Harvard-educated local historian, Draughon said.

Two unmarried daughters lived in the old house until well into the 20th century, and according to Draughon, local lore�colorful but not necessarily accurate�says the sisters didn't get along and didn't speak to each other. In fact, they are said to have occupied entirely separate parts of the home.

William Ivey, a zoology professor, bought the home in the 1950s. When a tornado in 1953 demolished the second floor, the Iveys restored the structure to its original one story, although they retained the Victorian staircase.

Since then, the home has fallen into disrepair.

Draughon said it was used for a time as a kindergarten and finally was divided into units to be rented cheaply to college students. Henderson Realty rents the units for Tzeng, who owns several properties in Auburn.

Mary Henderson of Henderson Realty said the home is not currently occupied, but is leased to AU students beginning in August.

"The home was converted into a daycare center at one point, prior to Dr. Tzeng owning it, and that compromised the historical integrity," she said. "I would love to see the home restored. It's not in the condition I would like to see it."

That would require someone buying the property and undertaking restoration, however, she noted.

"Everybody is concerned about the house," Draughon said.