Higher Education in Small Towns: The Case of New Philadelphia’s Town and Gown Relations
A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements to the degree of
Master of Architecture
In the Department of Architecture of the College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning By
Amanda Fortman
B.S. The Ohio State University May 2015
Committee Chair: Michael McInturf & Aarti Kanekar ABSTRACT
Higher Education in Small Towns: The Case of New Philadelphia’s Town and Gown Relations explores the Midwest town of New Philadelphia, Ohio and analyzes the history, context, culture, benefactors and failures to better understand the classification of small towns and how they thrive in today’s global society. The emphasis of this thesis will focus on the town and gown relationship New Philadelphia has with Kent State Tuscarawas Campus and primarily, the student housing crisis that many small towns face when they have any higher education presence in their town. Tasked with revitalizing the downtown of New Philadelphia, this thesis proposes a new approach to the student housing required of the Kent State Tuscarawas Campus; and that is to insert the students into the downtown. Unique challenges present themselves with this new approach, and the city and university will have a unique way in which they marry infrastructural, physical, social, and visual systems so as to create a holistic towngown presence, rather than the separation of town and gown.
iii © AMANDA FORTMAN Copyright, March 2018 Acknowledgements
MY FAMILY – For the endless support, guidance, reassurance, and faith in my talents and goals. I would not have made it through the seven years of architecture school without all of you.
MY FRIENDS – Thank you for the understanding and support throughout the years that you have all given me. I’m awestruck having gotten to watch all of us succeed and achieve the goals we had set out to accomplish seven years ago.
TARAN BOHNHOFF – Thank you for your endless patience, reassurance, and helping hand when it comes to schoolwork. I (and my physical models) would not have made it without you.
MY PROFESSORS – The breadth of knowledge that you all have – From OSU to UC – is amazing, and I’m honored to have been your student. I hope to understand architecture as well as you all do someday. Thank you for sharing your passion with me.
MYSELF – For seeing my dreams and aspirations come to life, and never giving up on my passion for architecture.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract iii Acknowledgements v Figures & Illustrations vii Introduction 01 New Philadelphia 03 Kent State Tuscarawas 09 Town & Gown Precedents 16 Transformation: Towngown 23 Conclusion 31 Bibliography 32 FIGURES & ILLUSTRATIONS
IMAGE 01 – IMAGE 04 REPRODUCTION: Fortman, Amanda. 2018. Map of New Philadelphia. ORIGINALS: All vector linework came from the City of New Philadelphia
IMAGE 05 – IMAGE 14 REPRODUCTION: Fortman, Amanda. 2018. Kent State Tuscarawas Housing Survey. ORIGINALS: Kent State Tuscarawas Campus. May 2016. Housing Survey 2016.
IMAGE 15 REPRODUCTION: Fortman, Amanda. 2018. Kent State Stark Campus. ORIGINALS: All vector linework was purchased from CAD MAPPER https://cadmapper.com/
IMAGE 16 REPRODUCTION: Fortman, Amanda. 2018. OSU Lima Branch Campus. ORIGINALS: All vector linework was purchased from CAD MAPPER https://cadmapper.com/
IMAGE 17 REPRODUCTION: Fortman, Amanda. 2018. Map of New Philadelphia. ORIGINALS: All vector linework came from the City of New Philadelphia
IMAGE 18 – IMAGE 19 Fortman, Amanda. 2018. Public vs. Private Diagrams.
vii FIGURES & ILLUSTRATIONS
IMAGE 20 MVRDV. Digital image. Crystal Houses. Accessed February 03, 2018. https://www.mvrdv.nl/en/projects/crystal-houses.
IMAGE 21 Ro, Lauren. "U.K.'s Royal Institute of British Architects Announces 2016 London Regional Awards Winners." Curbed. May 09, 2016. Accessed March 29, 2018. https://www.curbed.com/platform/amp/2016/5/9/11639172/best-architecture-in-london-riba- awards.
IMAGE 21 Fortman, Amanda. 2018. Facade.
viii New Philadelphia encapsulates the very idea and picture of what “Midwest Small
Towns” are described as: tranquil, historic architecture, farm town where the highest point in the town would be the church, the courthouse, or the grain mill, and a place where time slows down. As Wiebe describes small towns:
“Those who stayed behind – and small town culture was pervaded from that time to now with an awareness that residents had chosen to ‘stay behind’ – tried to forge new social identities. This effort would create the core notion of what was considered ‘small-town life’ during the early twentieth century. The small town was the place many city residents had left behind; it became metropolitan America’s ‘hometown.’ There residents maintained the old ways and lived more cohesive lives, even as they balanced limited local economic opportunities with a desire to modernize somewhat apace with the city. Small-town boosterism now heralded the values of smallness and modest growth. People living in a small society were more organically connected to each other and thus had stronger senses of identity, social responsibility, and morality. From the 1870s through the 1910s small-town life was mostly portrayed in this positive light. But many felt differently. To detractors small towns were provincial islands, out of touch with modern life. They were places in which residents lived frustrated and limited social, cultural, and intellectual lives. Indeed, many small-town colleges, academies, museums, hospitals, and government services struggled to remain competitive and eventually settled for being just viable”1
“This dichotomy between positive and negative, rooted in the experience of residents past and present, was the framework in which most people understood small towns in the twentieth-century America”2 This dichotomy encompasses what small towns represent however, does it represent small cities? New Philadelphia after all is a “town” of 17,000 and has a total square area of 8.23 miles, placing it into the “city” category. While New
Philadelphia has all the characteristics described in the positive light of small towns, I believe it is capable of stepping above the negative characteristics of a small town. New
1 Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York, 1967), 4; Dwight Hoover, "Social Science Looks at the Small American Town," in The Small Town in America: A Multidisciplinary Revisit, eds. Hans Bertens and Theo D'haen (Amsterdam, 1995), 19-29. 2 Mahoney, Timothy R. "The Small City in American History." Indiana Magazine of History99, no. 4 (2003): 311-30.
01 Philadelphia is the county seat, which means it has a level of government and employment that other towns in Tuscarawas County do not have. It shares Union Hospital, which is currently undergoing the transfer of ownership to Cleveland Clinic, which will ultimately bring more people into the city for treatment. It has the Kent State Tuscarawas Campus, which enrolls 2,000 students and brings a large number of younger demographics to the area.
Lastly, it has a retail commerce that draws people from surrounding areas. One key aspect is that New Philadelphia is the largest city in terms of land and population this far South and
East in Ohio; anything South of New Philadelphia is small due to the hills and mountains, and the largest city East of New Philadelphia is Pittsburgh. This allows New Philadelphia to be an anchor and center of commerce and activity for these Eastern and Southernmost towns and areas. If New Philadelphia can “rethink their approach and look for ways to capitalize on these assets”3, they can navigate away from the negative commendation of small towns and create a place that has the diversity of social, intellectual, and cultural that metropolis have, while maintaining its historical, agricultural, and “smallness” which makes these towns unique and tranquil.
3 Campoli, Julie, Elizabeth Humstone, and Alex S. MacLean. Above and Beyond: Visualizing Change in Small Towns and Rural Areas. Chicago, IL: Planners Press, American Planning Association, 2002.
02 Founded in 1804 by John Knisely, New Philadelphia came to fruition due to “natural resources, beautiful plains, fertile river bottomlands, and the fine stand of oak timber in the
Tuscarawas River Valley.”4 Together with surveyor John Wells, New Philadelphia was laid out to form a cohesive, grid plan which was extremely relatable to it’s predecessor,
Philadelphia. Wells and Knisely’s plan for New Philadelphia called for a centralized pattern with the Greek decumanus and cardo main streets, which today are High Street and
Broadway Street. The crossing of these two axes create the main square for the city, and to replicate what Philadelphia, PA has done, smaller squares are located around the main square. While Philadelphia’s intent was to create green public spaces for the surrounding city blocks with these squares, New Philadelphia deployed these squares as a smaller square for the surrounding blocks. With the centralized pattern comes a hierarchy spatial organization,
“a central area that is the focus of the community surrounded by peripheral districts and neighborhoods.”5 The main square sees its building pattern to be denser than areas surrounding it, and a secondary street system that creates the grid allows for an interconnectedness between blocks. Much like Fair Haven, Vermont, “green space is shared by buildings around it; it doesn’t separate structures and activities, it brings them together.”6 Building footprints at the main square consists of small building footprints and find square footage vertically. These low-lying buildings create a more diverse street façade and bring a human scale to the space.
4 Knisely, Charles. "Founding of New Philadelphia." The Founding of New Philadelphia. Accessed March 19, 2018. http://www.newphilaoh.com/Founding-of-New-Phila. 5 Campoli, Julie, Elizabeth Humstone, and Alex S. MacLean. Above and Beyond: Visualizing Change in Small Towns and Rural Areas. Chicago, IL: Planners Press, American Planning Association, 2002. 6 Campoli, Julie, Elizabeth Humstone, and Alex S. MacLean. Above and Beyond: Visualizing Change in Small Towns and Rural Areas. Chicago, IL: Planners Press, American Planning Association, 2002.
03 The residential pattern of New Philadelphia that is seen along these historic corridors also have a human scale embedded in the spacing and layout of the homes along the street.
Much like Waterbury, Vermont, the lots are narrow and deep, setting the homes close to the street and allowing for large back yards.7 The long side of the homes are perpendicular to the street and alleys are positioned to run alongside the lots to get to detached garages. This promoted pedestrian transit along the sidewalks and around the lots, creating a natural way of socializing amongst neighbors and passersby. This residential and central pattern of New
Philadelphia creates a holistic and hierarchically organized community that allowed for organic social structures and responsibilities to occur and set the stage for an identity of New
Philadelphia to come to life.
As New Philadelphia began to settle and grow in population and size, means of transportation for goods and people was desperately needed. Although the city was settled next to the Tuscarawas River, the river was too dangerous and unpredictable to allow goods to travel on. “Taverns and merchants thrived here as the village was a focal point for travelers and settlers from the East. With the construction of the Ohio-Erie Canal, New
Philadelphia became a marketing center for agricultural products and the canal provided water power for mills.”8 The Ohio-Erie Canal was monumental to the growth of New
Philadelphia, as it provided the transportation needed to export and import goods, and to allow people to travel from one village to the next. Ohio’s economy as a whole transformed from one of subsistence to one of industry and trade. The canal, and eventually the railroads,
7 Campoli, Julie, Elizabeth Humstone, and Alex S. MacLean. Above and Beyond: Visualizing Change in Small Towns and Rural Areas. Chicago, IL: Planners Press, American Planning Association, 2002. 8 Knisely, Charles. "Founding of New Philadelphia." The Founding of New Philadelphia. Accessed March 19, 2018. http://www.newphilaoh.com/Founding-of-New-Phila.
04 spawned and nurtured the growth of industries in agriculture, with New Philadelphia becoming an important wheat selling point, along with coal mining, oil drilling, and eventually steel mills. The canal itself powered various mills, ranging from woolen mills to flour mills, and planning mills. Agriculture remains a strong industry today, with
Tuscarawas County ranked top 10 in the state for livestock and dairy production
With the Ohio-Erie Canal running through the city, the city expanded South into the
Southside, which was formerly known as Lock Port. The town also continued to expand
West and East, which shifted the centralized pattern that was formally organizing the city to a linear pattern of development. While the village center was still at the intersection of
Broadway and High Street, the development of shops and commerce occurred linearly along
High Street, stretching West. This pattern would set the stage for New Philadelphia’s physicality that is still seen today and brought the challenges it now faces. In the century of development between 1854, when the first railroad was completed, to the 1950s, when the construction of the highways became a reality across America, New Philadelphia continued to grow. With this growth however, the city had its own physical constraints to accommodate for. To the West and North was the Tuscarawas River, large hills capped further development to the North as well as to the South of Lock Port, and a limited amount of area to the East was viable land in which the city could develop. It is also important to note that Kent State Tuscarawas Campus began as an academic center in 1962, with its first class held in 1968.9 The campus owns a majority of this viable land to the East of the city, which halts large development to occur along this periphery.
9 Bass, Barbara. "Special Collections and Archives." KSU Tuscarawas Campus Records | Kent State University Libraries. February 2006. Accessed March 19, 2018. https://www.library.kent.edu/ksu-tuscarawas-campus-records.
05 The New Philadelphia that is seen today suffers from what many small cities in the
Midwest suffer from: a lack of an identity. Many factors contribute to this loss of identity that the town formerly once knew, but the primary contributors are the two major highways and the movement that swept the country during the 1960-1980s. With the industrial age coming to an end and large industrial companies closing their downtown locations to relocate outside of metropolis instead, the loss of blue collar jobs was felt by many small towns across the Midwest. The highways allowed for convenient transportation to and from cities, and people’s mindset and view of the “American Dream” had shifted. The West side of New
Philadelphia is plagued by the development of chain restaurants and retailers, such as
Walmart. New Philadelphia has transformed from being the southernmost outpost of transporting goods and an anchor of taverns, restaurants, and shops to a stop off the highway for weary travelers needing fuel, an overnight stay, or a stop for something to eat.
The travelers who come to New Philadelphia rarely make it past 7th Street and exist in the area of town that looks just like any other stop off the highway.
With the center of commerce dislocated from the downtown and relocated to “big box” land of New Philadelphia, the loss of identity is present. The former downtown shops and historic buildings now sit vacant, as new land and infrastructure on the West side of town is more attractive to developers. While some local restaurants and shops still live in the downtown, they are few and far between. Many of the residents of New Philadelphia have been displaced as well. The movement previously discussed turned New Philadelphia into a vehicle-oriented city, where the residents drive from their homes in the outlying suburbs to the city for their errands. An influx of parking surface, from street to lots allows easy parking access for the residents and promotes vehicular transit even more and discourages pedestrian
06 activity on the sidewalks. This is not a side effect that only New Philadelphia suffers from, it is occurring everywhere in these small cities. As the authors of Above and Beyond describe:
“The loss of retail sales in urban and village centers has affected property values and employment. While suburban communities’ commercial property values have soared, those in urban centers have either declined or increased by only a small amount due to vacancies. Retail employment has also dropped in many cities. Locally owned businesses have shut their doors or moved to lower rent locations in the face of competition from national and regional chain stores in outlying suburban towns. Vacancies on Main Street began to blight the downtown. Major roads and parking projects caused the demolition of many buildings and created wide gaps between neighborhoods.”10
Jumping to today’s society, we are living in the shift in paradigm once more. With an environmental awareness that grips not just metropolis and foreign cities around the world, but even the small cities of the Midwest, people realize a change in the way we live is vital. A return to “smallness” has become the American Dream. The smallness described here puts emphasis back on bettering for the community, rather than personal development that was seen in the 1960s-1980s. Local shops and restaurants are becoming the first option for consumers, who appreciate and respect the individualist ownership rather than chain development of other stores. Retail is not immune to this new paradigm. Large department stores are closing their doors and reducing their scopes and products to accommodate for this shift. People are more interested in the experience of shopping rather than the “one stop shop” stores. Being able to walk along Main Street and purchase their goods from specialty stores and eating at a local restaurant has become the experience that individuals are interested in. To proactively anticipate these changes that are happening in large cities, small
10 Campoli, Julie, Elizabeth Humstone, and Alex S. MacLean. Above and Beyond: Visualizing Change in Small Towns and Rural Areas. Chicago, IL: Planners Press, American Planning Association, 2002.
07 cities are finding the assets the town has forgotten in the last fifty years and capitalizing on them to create a new identity and rebrand their city to differentiate themselves from others, which is the goal for New Philadelphia.
08 Kent State University has its roots in education as far back as its origins. The university was first created as The Kent State Normal School as a result of the Lowry
Normal School Bill of 1910 passed. This bill called for the need for professionally trained elementary teachers in the Ohio’s northeastern region.11 Founding President, Edward
McGilvrey “sensed as early as 1911 that the crest of normal school movement was subsiding and that the rising tide favored institutions that trained teachers for the state’s burgeoning high schools.”12 He then set out to turn the Kent State Normal School into a college, to add a liberal arts college and then finally turn it into a university. The extensive satellite campuses that Kent State has today is also rooted deeply in its history. In 1912, McGilvrey enrolled
849 students in twenty extension centers in different areas and towns. That following Spring, the enrollment number jumped to 1,045 students studying in twenty-five extension centers.13
Nearly fifty years after the opening of Kent State Normal School, the satellite campuses of Kent State began populating Ohio’s map in the Northeast region of the state.
Kent State Tuscarawas Campus opened as an academic center in 1962, with its first class held in 1968. Today, the campus’ enrollment numbers reach “nearly 2,100 students served through credit programming and another 4,500 individuals served through noncredit courses offered by the Office of Business and Community Services.”14 As one of Kent State’s largest satellite campuses, students can complete 11 bachelor’s and 16 associate degrees as well as
11 Hilldebrand, William H. September 27, 1910: The Kent State Normal School Begins. Publication. Kent State University. Kent State University, 1998. 12 Hilldebrand, William H. September 27, 1910: The Kent State Normal School Begins. Publication. Kent State University. Kent State University, 1998. 13 Hilldebrand, William H. September 27, 1910: The Kent State Normal School Begins. Publication. Kent State University. Kent State University, 1998. 14 "Kent State Tuscarawas." Tuscarawas Campus | Kent State University. March 01, 1970. Accessed March 19, 2018. https://www.kent.edu/tusc.
09 certificate programs. Students also can participate in any of the eleven athletic teams that are specific to the Tuscarawas campus.
What is significant about the Kent State Tuscarawas Campus is that it offers the best of both worlds when it comes to the university settings. It is a small university itself, having enrollment numbers are comparable, and in some cases, larger, than small public universities or private colleges. It allows students to have a more intimate interaction with their professors given the student/professor ratio, however, it is directly connected to one of the largest and prestigious university’s in Ohio and in the country. Another benefit that has widely been a deciding factor for students choosing which school to attend, and that is the cost. A year’s tuition costs range from $5,664 full-time for lower division courses (course numbers from 10000 to 20000), to $6,638 full-time for upper division courses (course numbers from 30000 to 40000).15 The same tuition and education costs at Kent State Main Campus, however is $10,012. These figures do not account for loan fees, books and supplies, transportation, personal expenses, or room/board. However, Kent State University’s Cost of
Attendance website breaks down these cost for the two different campuses. For regional
(satellite) campuses, the total cost to include tuition, books and supplies, room/board, personal expenses, transportation, and loan fees is $14,064. The total cost with the same inclusions at the Kent State Main Campus is $25,586. This is extremely significant for many students especially for universities that have regional/satellite campuses because students can get the same degree from the same university but cut their cost in half if they attend the regional/satellite campus.
15 "Kent State Tuscarawas Tuition." Tuition at Tuscarawas | Kent State University. Accessed March 19, 2018. https://www.kent.edu/tusc/tuition-fees.
10 The Kent State Tuscarawas Campus also has a Performing Arts Center, which plays a substantial role for the campus and the city of New Philadelphia. It draws many events ranging from well-known artists and bands, performance shows, and is a favorite for community events and weddings. The bands and shows however, begin to introduce another economic benefactor to the city of New Philadelphia. People travel from around the area to come to these shows, along with the band/performance shows and their crew. Lodging is a need that is present when these events occur, giving the city’s hotels the numbers needed to fill their rooms. The influx of individuals will also be going to the restaurants and bars in the city, which brings another type of individual into the city.
The Tuscarawas Campus envisions their campus to continuously grow and they anticipate their enrollment numbers to follow this growth pattern, especially as they continue to introduce athletic opportunities to students around the state and even in the country. Students who have an athletic talent find it extremely attractive that they can attend a regional campus to a large, prestigious university and have the opportunity to continue playing a specific sport and have their tuition paid for. This sets the stage to further recruit students from further distances than what they’ve seen in the previous decades: students in surrounding areas driving to the campus for class, then driving back home.
Recent surveys done by the Kent State Tuscarawas Campus (see images 05 – 14) show that a large percentage of their students feel that, although they have all the benefits previously described by attending a regional/satellite campus, they feel they are missing the “college experience”. The same surveys show that students feel that if they could live on or near the campus, they would then have the full college experience that many students have when attending medium or large universities. With these surveys, the university has put together a
11 new master plan which incorporates student housing, more academic buildings, and an athletic facility for the number of sports the campus already has and to anticipate new athletic adventures to join the Kent State Tuscarawas Campus. From the results of the surveys, the students strongly pushed the housing typology to be that of apartment style housing. The Dean of the Campus, Mr. Bradley Bielski, stated that dormitory style housing is something that would not suite the students that are enrolled at the Kent State
Tuscarawas campus, and that the campus itself would like to have a developer build the student housing. This allows the campus and the university to be free from any legal obligations and statures that come with housing students in a complex, and they therefore do not have to pay for the housing. As depicted from Kent State Tuscarawas’ conceptual map, a new gateway is proposed to enter the campus grounds, which would have student housing flanking either side of the road with a mixed-use development occurring. However, we see developments like these formed by other regional/satellite campuses and small universities, and this set up does not create an inclusive experience that the students are anticipating, but rather separates them from the university and from the city itself.
12 Where do you currently live? If student apartment-style housing was available on or near campus, would you choose to live in student housing? H A Definitely Somewhat Would Would Not Intersted Intersted Consider It Consider It
Answer % Count House 89.05% 187 Answer % Count Apartment 10.95% 23 Definitely Interested 37.62% 79 Total 100% 210 Somewhat Interested 14.76% 31 IMAGE 05 Would Consider It 25.71% 54 Would Never Consider It 21.90% 46 With whom do you currently live? Total 100% 210 Parents IMAGE 08
Family (children / How important to your college experience do you partner) think it is to live in student housing with other Friends college students?
I live alone 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 V S N I I I
Answer % Count
Parents 66.67% 140 Answer % Count Family (children/partner) 17.62% 37 Very Important 30.95% 65 Friends 6.19% 13 Somewhat Important 43.33% 91 I live alone 9.52% 20 Not At All Important 25.71% 54 Total 100% 210 Total 100% 210 IMAGE 06 IMAGE 09
How close to campus do you live? If you lived in student apartment-style housing, how many roommates would you consider? W - M None; Single - M M M Apartment
One Room- mate
Two Answer % Count Roommates
21-30 Miles 18.57% 39 Three Room- 11-20 Miles 29.05% 61 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Within 10 Miles 38.57% 81 More than 3o Miles 13.81% 29 Total 100% 210 Answer % Count IMAGE 07 None; Single Apartment 8.02% 13 One Roommate 45.06% 73 Two Roommates 35.19% 57 Three Roommates 11.73% 19 Total 100% 162 IMAGE 10
13 If you lived in student apartment-style housing, how much Please tell us your age range of the year would you want to live in student housing?