Morgantown, West Virginia's Sunnyside Neighborhood As a Cultural Landscape
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Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2017 "Home Sweet Away-From-Home?" Morgantown, West Virginia's Sunnyside Neighborhood as a Cultural Landscape Pamela Yvonne Curtin Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Curtin, Pamela Yvonne, ""Home Sweet Away-From-Home?" Morgantown, West Virginia's Sunnyside Neighborhood as a Cultural Landscape" (2017). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 5422. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/5422 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “Home Sweet Away-From-Home?” Morgantown, West Virginia’s Sunnyside Neighborhood as a Cultural Landscape Pamela Yvonne Curtin Thesis submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History Area of Emphasis in Public History Melissa Bingmann, PhD., Chair Ken Fones-Wolf, PhD. Jenny Boulware Department of History Morgantown, West Virginia 2017 Keywords: Morgantown, West Virginia, Sunnyside, Cultural Landscapes, Neighborhoods, Identity, Revitalization, Student Culture, Student Housing, College Towns, Microhistory Copyright 2017 Pamela Yvonne Curtin ABSTRACT “Home Sweet Away-From-Home?” Morgantown, West Virginia’s Sunnyside Neighborhood as a Cultural Landscape Pamela Yvonne Curtin Sunnyside is a 130-acre neighborhood bordering West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Since the 1890s, it has been home to a variety of transient residents, including industrial workers, families, and individuals associated with the University. Beginning in the 1960s, Sunnyside transitioned into Morgantown’s primary student neighborhood. Students took up residence in old two- and three-story frame houses broken into smaller units; often, these houses lacked necessary upkeep, failed code standards, and indicated the neighborhood’s broader deteriorating conditions. Furthermore, student parties in Sunnyside grew increasingly intense and reflected negatively on West Virginia University, labeled in the 1970s as a “party school.” Recently, Sunnyside has been the target of significant revitalization efforts aimed at transforming its physical, social, and cultural constructions, which have stirred conversations about Sunnyside’s past as well as its future. Using contemporary revitalization as context, this study explores Sunnyside as a cultural landscape. Drawing from interdisciplinary sources, Sunnyside fits within historiographies of higher education, deindustrialization, local history, and public history, as well as sociological and geographical studies of college towns, party schools, and urban revitalization. The first chapter is a microhistory that examines select structures in Sunnyside; it traces the stories of people who lived and worked in these structures before they were demolished to make way for an eight-story apartment complex. The second chapter looks at off-campus housing in Morgantown in the mid- twentieth century, analyzing student understandings of their relationships with town and gown communities and the quality of housing available. Lastly, the third chapter connects Sunnyside as a controversial student neighborhood and West Virginia University’s party school image in the late twentieth century. Together, these studies reveal Sunnyside’s diverse meanings and purposes. iii Acknowledgments I extend deep appreciation to the committee members, Melissa Bingmann, Ken Fones- Wolf, and Jenny Boulware, who have guided this project from start to finish. Their expertise, insight, and open door policy have not only strengthened this project, but also my knowledge and skills as a historian. I cannot overstate Jenny Boulware’s dedication to preserving and interpreting Sunnyside’s history, while enlightening students through the processes of historical inquiry. She and her students have laid an invaluable foundation for myself and future historians. I appreciate her inviting me to talk with her current Local History Research Methodology course and for joining me in Indianapolis to present our work at the Annual Meeting of the National Council on Public History. I thank Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and fellow graduate students in the Writings Seminar on twentieth century history for taking the time to read drafts, provide feedback, and discuss Sunnyside’s past, present, and future. I am grateful for the staff and volunteers at the West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, and Aull Center for Local History and Genealogical Research. Their assistance on a day-to-day basis is so appreciated, as is their larger mission of preserving and making accessible important historical collections. As a writer, I thank the WVU English Department, especially Tom Sura and Sarah Morris, and the Eberly Writing Studio for their support and guidance. I am delighted I can call both Woodburn and Colson Halls home. My colleagues in the WVU History Department are an important source of wisdom and encouragement. I thank everyone for their fellowship. As always, I am grateful for the History Department at Saint Vincent College. I thank Tim Kelly for his constant support and vision for my potential and Karen Kehoe for sparking my passion for public history. I send love and gratitude to my parents for instilling in me an appreciation for history and to my sister Kathrine for our trips to museums and historic sites around the world. iv Table of Contents I. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 II. A Microhistory of Sunnyside ............................................................................................ 17 III. Students, the University, and In Loco Parentis in Off-Campus Housing ......................... 50 IV. Sunnyside: A Landscape of Personalities and Problems .................................................. 88 V. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 122 VI. Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 127 VII. Appendix ......................................................................................................................... 135 1 INTRODUCTION “You can’t take away the memories!” Janna Kuett, an undergraduate at West Virginia University, wrote on Twitter on April 4, 2013, the day Mutt’s Sunnyside Pub, a favorite student hangout, was demolished in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Morgantown, West Virginia.1 Six months earlier, the modest three-story frame house converted into a tavern sold for $825,000, a price that reflected not the value of the structure, but the value of the land.2 West Virginia University, in a public-private partnership with a local development group, purchased Mutt’s, along with 39 neighboring buildings of similar construction and quality, to make way for a $70 million residential and commercial complex within walking distance of the University’s Downtown campus.3 The demolished structures, most of which were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, architecturally characterized Sunnyside as a neighborhood once built for local industrial workers and their families. Yet for University students like Janna Kuett, the demolition signaled the end of a newer social and cultural era in Sunnyside. The loss of Mutt’s, the last bar in Morgantown’s most recognizable student neighborhood, meant that late nights, cheap alcohol, and free pool with friends would be history. In fewer than 140 characters, Kuett’s exclamation on the permanence of memory captures a divisive contemporary issue: the future of Sunnyside and the role of its past. Sunnyside, a 130-acre swath of hillside along the Monongahela River, has been home to groups of transient residents since the 1890s. The neighborhood thrived with Morgantown’s 1 Janna Kuett, Twitter post, April 4, 2013, 10:35am https://twitter.com/JKuett/status/319820395656138754 2 Monongalia County, West Virginia, Deed Book 1468, p. 383; Mottie Pavone to Paradigm Development Group, LLC, October 26, 2012; Office of the Recorder of Deeds, City of Morgantown. 3 University Relations/News, “WVU engages in public-private partnership to develop a $70 million mixed use residential and retail complex in Sunnyside,” WVU Today, Oct. 26, 2012, accessed April 24, 2017, http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/n/2012/10/26/wvu-engages-in-public-private-partnership-to-develop-a-70-million-mixed- use-residential-and-retail-complex-in-sunnyside. 2 glass industry into the mid-twentieth century. The houses, two- or three-story frame structures with rooms spacious enough to accommodate numerous tenants, filled with industrial workers and their families. They also became