This housed the Ohio Wesleyan Female College until the 1960s

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Delaware, Ohio, has a reputation as a seat of higher learning in frontier Ohio. Ohio Wesleyan University was founded there in 1844 to meet the need for a suitable Methodist school.

The success of Oberlin College, another Ohio school of 1833, had shown the soundness of the idea of co-education, and a need was soon felt in Delaware for a suitable school for young women.

To meet the need, one Rev. William Grissell and his wife founded the Delaware Female Seminary in 1850, located in the old Delaware Academy building.

By 1852, however, the Seminary had declined and was to be abandoned, but a local Methodist group which had been meeting in the Seminary's chapel decided to continue the school under the name of the Delaware Female College. It was soon decided that roomier quarters were needed, and a move was made in 1853 to relocate the school in the mansion of the late William Little, located on a hill on the town's western outskirts. At this time the name was changed again to Ohio Wesleyan Female College. Though a frame addition was made to the Little mansion to accommodate increasing numbers of students, facilities still were not adequate, and in 1855 plans were made and work begun on the Monnett Hall.

Probably it was intended from the start to unite the Female College with Ohio Wesleyan University, but this union did not take place until 1877. At that time Monnett Hall became the West Campus of OWU.

Monnett's contrasting architectural styles are good examples of modes of building current at the times the two main portions were built. It was in public buildings such as Monnett that the Italian Villa and Romanesque revival styles were most monumental and powerful.

Building Description

Monnett Hall, located on the West Campus of Ohio Wesleyan University, was built as the home of the Ohio Wesleyan Female College. It replaced two earlier structures which had become inadequate due to the college's burgeoning enrollment.

Monnett was built in two major stages. It forms a huge "E" with its axis oriented north and south, and three wings extend to the west.

Monnett is built entirely of brick, on a cut limestone foundation, and its various parts have three, three-and-a-half, and four stories. It is a complex collection of forms and masses, with both gable and hip roofs, towers and turret, dormers, porches, and numerous additions and alterations.

The southern end was built first. Construction began about 1855, according to the college history. One wing was erected first, then the central block, and the other wing a few years later. Construction of this original portion was completed by 1860.

It was built in the Italian Villa style then current, with irregular massing, a square tower, and bracketed eaves. The main facade of the central block faces east. It rises four stories to a gable roof. The first floor is of cut stone, and the rest of brick enhanced by arcading. Windows are round-headed double-hung sash. Centered in the gable is the legend "Monnett Hall" in raised letters, and above this the projecting eaves are supported by ornate brackets.

To the left of this block stands the tower. It is set back about eight feet from the plane of the central block. It rises six stories and is distinguished by paired double-hung sash windows with round heads and stone hoodmolds. Above these is an octagonal window, and below the cornice there is heavy brick corbelling. In the tower's mansard roof, on all four sides, are louvered windows in a Palladian motif. The main entrance to Monnett Hall is in the second story of the tower.

To the left of the tower, set back approximately another twenty feet, is the southernmost portion of the building, the part said to have been built first. Like the adjacent parts, this portion's first floor is of cut stone and the stories above are of brick. But the wall treatment is much plainer, lacking arcading, corbelling, brackets, or any cornice treatment. Windows are simple rectangular 6/6 double-hung sash. This block has its gable end facing south. Intersecting it and extending to the west is the four-bay gabled wing. Wall treatment of this wing, and of the middle wing, both of which probably date from the initial period of construction, is very simple, virtually identical to that of the southernmost block of the main building.

It was in 1857, during the first stage of construction, that Monnett Hall gained its name. Mary Monnett, then a student at the Female College, offered a gift of $10,000 to aid in completing the school's still-unfinished new building. In gratitude, the trustees named the building for her.

In 1870 fire destroyed the roof and upper story of the south wing, but the damage was completely repaired.

For thirty years this original portion of Monnett Hall was adequate to house the activities of the school. It accommodated 150 boarders and 300 day pupils. It contained a chapel, recitation rooms, studios, library, society halls, and parlors, as well as residence rooms. It was a self-contained educational unit.

Continued growth of the school resulted in a $50,000 addition to Monnett in 1890 which doubled the size of the building. This L-shaped addition was in the Romanesque revival style of the period, and it contrasts sharply with the more delicate original structure.

The 1890 addition is of red brick on a cut stone foundation. The windows have stone lintels and sills. The facade is distinguished by a three-story circular turret at the building's northeast corner. The turret has four windows in each story, and it is topped by a bellcast roof.

Early illustrations show the building's first floor as a half-basement in the stone foundation. Windows and doors have been blocked up and the earth filled in along both sides of the addition, however, so that the original 4½-story structure has been reduced to 3½. The east facade has ten bays. First-floor windows appear to be fixed, and they have ten-light transoms above. Second and third-floor windows are rectangular double-hung sash.

At the roof are three small dormers of wood construction with rectangular sash windows; and two larger gables of brick and stone. These contain a single round-arched sash window flanked by a pair of square multi-paned Windows, The original east entrance was surrounded by a circular stone arch, but this has been blocked up and a window put in its place.

Treatment of the north facade of the 1890 addition is similar, except that its two arched entrances remain unchanged.

There have been numerous additions to Monnett Hall over the years, but they are largely cosmetic.

The major addition to the original portion is a columned one-story porch which starts at the entrance in the base of the tower and surrounds the arcaded central block on two sides. Of classical derivation, this porch is not an unattractive addition to the building. Next to it on the north, a portion of the original structure was enlarged by moving the wall out one bay from its original plane. To the north of it, a one-story brick entry has been added. This entry abuts the 1890 addition.

Changes to the addition have been confined to a small enclosed porch at one of the doors on the north facade, and a single-story brick room, perhaps a dining room, on the north facade at the west end of the building. On the west facade of the addition, below the hipped roof of that facade, some auxiliary kitchen facilities have been built.

Monett Hall was last occupied in the early 1960s, and unfortunately was demolished in October 1978.

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