Bruce Goetzman

BG: Well— back then — you applied for a job and if they responded that they were interested in you — they invited you to the campus. If you weren’t probably from overseas or something. They invited you to campus to get acquainted and look you over and you met with, I met with the dean of our college. Which was called “Applied Arts” in those days —and then they brought over some other professors and they talked to you and if they were all interested, then they would put you up for the night [laughs]. And they put me up for the night in the Terrace Plaza hotel was what it was called in those days downtown and —the next day they took me to see the vice president and eventually the president of the university —for final okay, but by the time you see the president —they pretty much said ‘yeah we guess that we want you’. So they made me a job offer and I moved.

JW: Nice! So —uh

BG: Much simpler process in those days than it is today. Now you have to get a clearance from —uh —government and —uh—I know that a few years ago I taught a course, in fact three or four years ago and I had to apply and it took —something like six weeks to get clearance from government [laughs] checking back at all past employers from all this and that to see if I had any criminal records. I don’t think they bothered in those days.

JW: Okay—so um—did you teach like architecture when you were there when they first hired you?

BG: Oh yes. I was hired to teach architectural design, architecture graphics, drawing. Architectural students used the T square and the triangle, now they use a computer.

JW: Nice, nice. So um, so when you’re at UC, what did you want your students to take away from your classes?

BG: Well any teacher wants to come away with a realization that they learn something hopefully. Not every student does, but we would like them to. But you hope that they got something out of your time with them. Architectural design is a very time-consuming process and it’s very one on one other than a lecture program. So you get to know your students pretty well and their capabilities and in that respect when I first started we—had uh—twelve hours of contact with students every week, not that you saw each student every day, but you had a chance to sit with them, and then look at their work and talk to them and get to know them pretty well—what their strengths were, what their backgrounds were, which is a good thing. Which is to a degree in a big lecture format, it’s hard to do that.

JW: So —um —I’m guessing —so you like teaching so um—

BG: Well I kept at it for 40 years.

JW: 40 years, yeah that’s what I thought, so why did you like it?

BG: Well just to be facetious —it’s a—friend of mine, colleague of mine at the office said that teaching was really a great part time job and a lousy full time job as far as that goes for reward, economic rewards, but—

JW: Sure.

BG: I hope, hopefully people don’t stay in academia if they don’t like what they’re doing, uh—you have to.

JW: Alright, so um—another question I guess would be uh—what was like, your relationship among your colleagues, like back then when you were teaching?

BG: Well our colleagues was quite small at that time and I think we only had about nine hundred students, which —uh —so we got to know all the faculty people in all various disciplines and as time went on and the college got bigger —that became a little more difficult. We used to have a faculty lounge in our college, so we would meet faculty people there and all the faculty mailboxes were there, so that where all the communications came down to you and you went into the faculty mail room or lounge and got your coffee and picked up your mail. And it was right across the hallway from the main office in the college so with the —but—basically it was a —more collegial environment early on. As the University grew and as the college grew, it changed a bit and became more departmental focused. This is I think true today, mostly. Things tend to be more grouped around the college or around the departments, I should say rather than the college.

JW: So since you were there like forty years, um —what changes did you see throughout the vision of UC?

BG: Well of course, UC when I came here was a city school. That’s why they were relatively small and it became a state affiliated school in the 1960s, late 60s and the reason for that was they wanted to grow but they didn’t have any money. The only levy support for the university was from the city and Golf Manor, a suburb. And the rest of suburbs didn’t have tax levies to support the university—so —as the suburban areas grew and the population grew in that respect, they had to become state affiliated. That was the first step before coming complete—becoming a police state university and—state affiliation brought money, no question about that, but it also brought bureaucracy and—I like to relate when I first came to my college. We had a dean, and the dean had a secretary, and there were two secretaries in the outer office of the college, and there was a history student that came over two afternoons a week part time and ran the mimeograph machine. Now you don’t even know what a mimeograph machine even was.

JW: Yeah, I was about to say that.

BG: Well that was of course [laughs] before computers and anything else—everything had to be done on a—special—paper that imprinted the—and then that was run through the mimeograph machine and inked and things came out. So you couldn’t run in a get a xerox, right away, you had to get in a line and I think Thursday or Friday, Thursday was the day the graduate students ran over and we had one faculty member that was relieved of a class to do scheduling. And that was about it, we didn’t even had department chairmen in those days —just lead professor in each discipline. So, it’s a far cry from what administration is today and any college. In fact, there are more administrative people in the department of architecture and interior design in the college than there were in 1959 in the whole college. But you know, that’s one of the problems. I think of the university because—administration has ballooned, and probably at the expense of faculty. There are more part time people teaching, although we certainly have—in those days teaching in various disciplines.

JW: Okay so—I guess this would lead into another question I had, which would be like—what changes did you see like—over like the university like as it transformed over the years like with the buildings like when it expanded.

BG: Well, of course when I came—DAAP, or as it’s called now was—had the original auditorium portion of it and have you been in the building at all?

JW: in DAAP?

BG: Yep.

JW: Yes, I have my classes in there.

BG: Okay—so then of course there was the —that was —the original part was built in 19 —54, I think or 52 and there was an auditorium, and an art gallery and a library —was there on the what was the north side of university avenue which was the med campus entrance now. But university avenue was a through street at that time, and then there were—that was before Martin Luther King was built and in fact, DAAP was the first building that went into what was Burnet Woods park. There’s a big controversy about that, jumping the University Avenue because the—they before 1952, it had been the north end of campus. So, anyway that was a change and then of course DAAP has had two subsequent major additions —but —it was 1958 the classroom part was built. One of the original colony—that was a three-story portion. Interestingly, the library, there was on the top floor of the first part, didn’t have any handicapped accessibility. The elevator in the building didn’t go up to the top floor, you had to walk and eventually they ended up putting in a chairlift. So that we had a handicapped that, who, he couldn’t get into the library. And supposedly the reason that they didn’t build another floor onto the DAAP building, they could have, if you know originally, well you know I don’t know if you pay close enough attention to that but there are round columns, concrete columns and in order to put a top floor on which had been a library floor. They economized and didn’t put enough steel in the columns to support another floor. So therefore, they had to walk up to the library before they put the chairlift in. They might say its false economy, but in those days, people weren’t concerned about the handicapped particularly. One of the things we used to do, we started to become part of architectural practice that you had to accommodate handicapped people. We used to put students in wheelchairs in the building and see how they can navigate. Then they realized they couldn’t get into the toilet rooms because of the way they were constructed, they couldn’t make the turns. Which was a good lesson to them, they couldn’t get into the building. They said, ‘go into the library; and they said ‘well we can’t get into the library because there’s no way for someone in a wheelchair to get there.’ Steps of the buildings instead of ramps and things were not possible in those days. You know the ramp into the original DAAP building was in the loading docks.

JW: Okay, yeah that’s crazy.

BG: Which is hard to believe isn’t it.

JW: Yeah.

BG: But that’s how practice of architect, the design of buildings the change and the federal requirements to accommodate the handicapped were very necessary. Even crosswalks, as you know, have ramps now and now, so it didn’t use to be there. A curb used to be a major obstacle to those in wheelchairs or crutches or even old dodering people. But the campus certainly has changed. We used to say UC for many years stood for “Under Construction,” you’ve heard that one I know [laughs]. The main campus is pretty much done, pretty much done. Probably with the exception of, they really haven’t come up with any real ideas, made public anyways of what to do with the old library area and the YMCA, which is a fine building but it’s deteriorating. They’ve talked about making it a sort of a reception center for the university and doing remodeling or new construction there. But that’s probably the one area where there’s going to be major changes over the year.

JW: Oh yeah.

BG: But what’s changed, a lot has changed physically, of course even the boundaries of campus. You know Jefferson Avenue of course. And Jefferson Avenue is an interesting street because it runs right into the Environmental Health Center, doesn’t it? Well it didn’t used to. It used to go, Jefferson there, connected to Jefferson beyond the Environmental Health Center. Well that was an interesting exercise and—that—you see you have to put the university as a city university in context woth city planning development. Cincinnati has been a leader, one time, in planning, urban planning. Plans that were done for parks recently, we have a great parks system in the city because planning goes back in 20s’. In the 1930s, the planning was done. After WWII, because there was no construction around that time and relatively modest construction in the 30s’ because of the depression, the—they decided that in order to expand cities, because the fabric of cities was getting older. They had to have a federal program for urban renewal and at that time urban renewal funds were primarily a competition. They had a certain amount of money set aside and cities applied for them, and based upon the merit of their application, depending on how much money they got. But mainly they were focusing on rehabilitation. A lot of it was connected to the federal defense highway system or the interstate as it was called, originally called, the defense highway system. Pattered that from the German autobahns, WWII when Hitler built. Of course, our auto bonds defense highways systems went through the center of cities. The Germans built theirs remote from the cities, around the cities so they couldn’t be put out of action from enemy bombing. Of course, that wasn’t the point here, but the system was sold as a defense highway system, the interstate initially. Of course, we all know what that became. When I first moved to Cincinnati in 75’, ended at Ludlow Avenue at Central Parkway. That’s when, we came in and that’s when it preceded into the city along central Parkway. Of course, it was extended into the West End and reached across into Kentucky and then tying it in a circle freeway. When I first came here, the first spur off it was built off 75, then went over to the—shopping center at TriCounty. That was one short little piece, that was it. That was of course drawn on paper on how they would build it, but that was how it was constructed and that would give me an idea of the scope. Of course, the highway system lead to suburban expansion. Also, the highway system penetrated cities and moved through—resulted in the clearance of a lot of areas. It so happened that many of them were lower income areas, no question about that. But, on the other hand they tried to get as close as they could to the urban core, and unfortunately, the fringes of the urban core were where the poor people lived. If you wanted to get as close as you could, you had to tear down some of the deteriorated, supposedly deteriorated areas of all that weren’t necessarily were. That lead to a lot of displacement. One time Cincinnati had one of the largest urban renewal clearance in the country and that was down in the West End and that was where interstate 75 went through all that clearance was there and one of the things that cities had to do when funding. I remember 10% of the cost of the funds, they got from the federal government for urban renewal as a match. Well this was where the university came in, and Jefferson avenue was changed, because they bought land between, what was the campus and expanded to the east to Jefferson Avenue. And they also built three apartment buildings. You know, two of them are there and the third one was replaced, and that was the city’s contribution to match the urban renewal fund, was to expand the university. This is interesting. What was campus Green at that time was a parking lot, it was called, Lot 1. That’s where the students parked. Because basically this was a commuter school, they didn’t have a lot of dormitories, and of course they still don’t have enough as campus has grown. And of course, that was an interesting major change. Another thing that was done to the east of campus was the Avondale-Coryville renewal project. That was the largest urban rehabilitation project in the country at one time. So you had, Cincinnati had the largest urban renewal project in the West End, and they had the largest urban rehabilitation project. Both of them had problems, if you studied the West End, maybe you have or haven’t, but it has been characteristic as one of the largest urban parking lots in the country. Because what they ended up building was a low density, apartment or low-density development. It was much more dense before the interstate plowed through and of course before the clearance program. The problem with the clearance program was that they had the mistaken idea if they built new infrastructure, new roads, sewers all the utilities were new. All these industrial sites that had been there, you might see multi-story or older industrial buildings were going to flock back. Well, that didn’t make as much sense after the fact, because if you have a company that was being displaced, the company’s got money to move, relocate. Well where did they relocate? Out in the suburbs where they could get enough land for parking, which they didn’t have where they were. Also, where they could build factories horizontally, and also that they were able to have enough space for expansion. And so, when they rehabilitated the West End, Canyon Barrow it was called, the West End. They said ‘move back in,’ and they said ‘we don’t want to move back in. Why should we move back into the center of the city? Well we like it where it is.’ The executives could get there from Indian Hill and Hype park easily. Of course, the workers had to drive and they better have a car, and poor workers that can’t afford a car, well too bad, too bad. So anyway, that’s part of the problem with the West End. What they should have done in retrospect was that they should have done it in phases. They should have said to a company, ‘well we have this nice site, we will move you from block A where you are now, and we have block B ready for your new factory.’ But they didn’t do that, they had to tear it all down at one time and it took too long. They learned a lesson there, urban renewal that is. If you want people to stay, you have to provide a place for them to go to more or less close to where they are. But up on the Hill top we had a rehabilitation program. So—the idea was that urban rehabilitation was combination or new development and rehab of houses, living places. Well that’s a good idea—and one of the problems that of course that they wanted to combat was institutional expansion. You have to understand that Martin Luther King—Highway was built because, this was called pill hill. See all the hospitals were concentrated around the medical hill. It used to be called UC’s hospital—General Hospital it was called—where the medical school is now. There was a Jewish Hospital, Children Hospital, right there. Bethesda Hospital was on Reading Road. We had good Samaritan here and the Deacon’s Hospital is gone now, they’re tearing that down. This was the, the hospital complex. So the idea was that you build Martin Luther King to tie in the western and northern boulevard and you pushed it across the city to tie it into 71. So that that, which didn’t get done initially, so that people and you know, it was extended on into Walnut Hills and people from the east side and the west side could get to the hospital complex. So what happened to the hospitals? The Deaconess is closed, Bethesda is closed, Jewish moved to Kenwood. And many hospitals have been established around the perimeter to better serve the suburban community, instead of having people run in. Now, I must admit the most extensive emergency rooms in the urban areas are in the UC hospitals, that’s where all the gunshot wounds go and that kind of thing. If you want to see action on a Saturday night, camp out there and look at the problems that are right there. Anyways that was planning, lets get back to Coryville and Urban Renewal. The problem between East and West campus, there was that, there was residential development and the University wanted to tie the two campuses together that was the plan. You know why, you know where the nursing school is now?

JW: Yeah.

BG: Okay. Procter and Gamble, that building was constructed, it was a gift from the Proctors at Proctor and Gamble to the university to finance the school of nursing. And, they said it had to be right there on that corner, well that wasn’t true. They didn’t have any strings attached to it, it could have been any place, but the university wanted it there. As part of the—one of the problems with doing it there was that one of the streets between there that wandered down where the Mariott hotel is now, that wasn’t going. And there was a recreation building there, Coryville Recreation, and a baseball field, and that was on Eden Avenue which runs into the medical school now. There was also another little street and I guess it was called Pan Street, that street had the largest concentration of houses that had been rehabilitated in the whole Avondale-Coryville neighborhood. But in expansion, what they did of course as to tear down those houses, and tear down the community center, which they built of course over in the university avenue. Which leads to the question, well we spent all this money to rehab these buildings for all these people, with modest needs, because that was the idea. Then the university expanded into them and all that money was wasted. I’ll give you an anecdote about that, I was member of a group called North Cincinnati Neighbors at that time, which was a community group and no longer in existence, they have community councils and things that are a little different in makeup now. But anyway, we went to, there was a minister, there was an episcopal church in Mt. Auburn, and we went around and were talking to people in the neighborhood about this expansion of the university and Martin Luther King expansion and this was all a part of this. I remember two things, one group was a man, a black man on his front porch and this was a Saturday afternoon and we said, we asked him about having to move and he said I don’t want to, but I have to because—he said, this is the third time I’m going to have to move. I had a house in the West End which urban renewal took, and they told me where, and he asked where can I go? Well they said go to Coryville, we’ve got some money for you there to fix up a house. So, he moved to Coryville and bought a house and got a loan to fix it up, moved to Coryville and once he was there a few years, not too long. He was told, well you got to move again, and I remember he said, ‘I get older and tireder’ [laughs]. Well the, but he said you know, this is for young people, that’s good and anyways that was one thing I remember from that. Then there was the other one, there was this drug store on the corner of what is Vine street. It was a commercial building and I think it was three stories high and there was a house next to it and we went to a house next to it, the drugstore at that time was close and a man was there and his wife or sister, I can’t remember met us when we went in and talked. They asked why are you here and we said we were just trying to see how your feelings is about having to move and the woman says, well don’t mention my husband or brother because we grew up in this house and ran the drugstore next door that was closed. If you mention why you’re here, he’s going to break down and cry. Well of course they came in and why, then they broke down and cried because he was being forced to move. So, stories like that have led to the fact that, okay we have to draw the line and how big is the university going to expand, institutional expansion. Well what’s happened, the university drew lines, and everybody was like oh, well ok. We will continue the rehabilitation up to that. Well planning is something that is not static, planning is dynamic, cities are dynamic and so they change. What was a good idea at one time, ten years later, well not such a good idea, hind sight is wonderful. I mention about the nursing school, the university said they had to have the nursing school at this one corner that’s where Ms. Procter wanted it, and well that was not true. They didn’t need to do it, but that’s where the university wanted it to build a bridge between the east and west campus and that’s subsequently where they built the Mariott hotel and the administration building. So, these are changes that were made not necessarily to the benefit of the people that were being forced to leave or forced to change. And we see now the pressures of development in the university has change, look at the apartment buildings that are being built, and look at Straight street as what’s its going to become. The developers there call it Great Street its going to be. Well they’re talking about building a 15-story apartment building up where —now where the old deaconess hospital has been torn down, they’re going to build an office building. And guess who’s going to be the tenant?—The university, of course they’re going to rent it for the developer because they need office space. They don’t have a faculty club anymore at the university, that’s gone. The faculty club, they had one when I first came to campus, we had a faculty dining room in McMicken hall or the student union room and the —so basically that’s where faculty if they wanted to be collegial, they would go to. Then they built a faculty club at where the new business school is. Then they built as a part of that expansion was an alumni center next to it so they could use the kitchen in the faculty club. The faculty club expansion was built using donation money and it was a nice place it was fine. They used to use serve dinner there as a matter of fact, as well as lunch but that was before the library was built across the street from it across, that site. It existed until they decided to tear it down as expansion for the business school. And, anyway those were changes that were made, and of course where the Langsam library is now, that used to be a hill, it was a bump. There used to be, you know where Snake road is, where you enter the parking garage for DAAP?

JW: Yeah I think so.

BG: Okay that road used to wind around the park and connect and so, that’s where faculty parking was, for DAAP was anyway, and you could get a permit there because they didn’t allow students to park there. In fact, when I first came faculty parking was free—students had to pay a little bit to get in a lot, the faculty was free. Then they gave us a raise, like 300 dollars a year or something like that and then they charged 300 dollars for parking! [laughs] And I remember one of my colleagues who lived in an apartment across Clifton Avenue—she pointed that out to her glee and she said ‘I could walk to work and you drive, and I get to keep my raise and you have to give it back to the university.’ But that’s—but basically if you think about planning from an urban point of view, what’s happening of course east and west campus have come together. The latest, biggest addition of expansion is the Children’s Hospital of course moving to the north and that’s created a, you know bigger problems. But there’s going to be more expansion with the new 71 exit to the Martin Luther King has created a whole new area of expansion and that’s going to change. And, the other thing of course is the phenomenon of the gentrification of the whole inner city. Who would have thought that Over the Rhine would be a place that people would clamor to move into? I’ll give an example of that, when I was offered a building at the corner of—oh dear —in Over the Rhine at one time, the corner of Orchard Street, oh I can’t remember the north south street. But anyway for $12,000—Orchard Street is a little short street that runs between Main Street and a street to the east and a friend of mine just bought a house on Orchard Street a couple of years ago and has put $800,000 into it.

JW: Wow!

BG: Now diagonally across the street, back in the early 1970s, I could have had a house that’s still there for $12,000.

JW: That’s crazy.

BG: Crazy! It is, it’s crazy! But people are clamoring to come back into the city and that’s—but one time it was to go to the suburbs and now, well what’s the reason for change. Well one thing, aging population, also the fact that commute time and a lack of any rapid transit that amounts to anything plus that doesn’t help the suburbia at all and—so inadequate bus service certainly. The —there used to be a man in our faculty, part time name Bob Seagull. He’s no longer alive but, Mr. Seagull was one of the more prominent urban planners in our country and worked on the master plan for the city of Cincinnati in the 1940s and his proposal for the interstate highway system as it came into the city was to put dedicated bus lanes in—that weren’t for traffic, an extra lane. Well they didn’t do that. You see, they wanted to economize, they didn’t build and Seagull says, ‘you’re going to need it and you have all these people moving out into the country. Oh well, we’re going to ride in our cars, and he says it’s going to be too congested.’ So there, what do we have for congestions. Seeing all that, one of the interesting planning situations, one of the fastest growing cities in this country is Austin, Texas. Which is the capital and the University of Texas is there. And has become a tech area and one of the problems they have is that they don’t have any rapid transit. People that live in the suburbs, many of them have to have, in the city so they don’t have to commute, you know an hour and a half each way to get into work. You know that’s a obviously people that want to work downtown many of them say they want to live downtown and that accounts for the Over the Rhine, and some of the changes and of course that has led to, you know displacement. What was Over the Rhine, basically people that had been displaced in the West End and a lot of them moved to Over the Rhine. They also moved to —Coryville and Avondale —and a lot of this goes back to changing zoning regulations so that, you know WWII had some effect on it because there was a housing shortage and they weren’t building new ones. Industry was expanding and they changed zoning regulations so they could take a neighborhood like Avondale and big houses and subdivide them into apartments. That’s one of the reasons that led to the decline of Mt. Auburn and Avondale was because of the change in zoning regulations. But it was needed at the time, they weren’t building, they didn’t have money for new places people had to live someplace. You were coming to the city from the countryside whether it’s from Kentucky or further south, to work in industry because the jobs were here and that’s a necessity. They moved, they had places to live. So it led to overcrowding, and deterioration, and people had the money to move further out did. So the university, you know has expanded and continues to expand. Maybe many changes, I don’t know what we’re going to see probably the most construction is going to be on Martin Luther King over to the east, between the —they’re going to build a new Environmental Health Center over here. So that’s —along with other developments that going to take place—so it’s a—you know, cities are dynamic they aren’t static. If they try to be static, well what’s Venice today, it’s a tourist attraction and its also sinking. The problem with Venice is that there are so many tourists that nobody wants to live there, permanently. Even though that’s a desirable place, but that’s been one of the criticisms. But that’s another whole issue, you get into the idea of tourism, but you know these are all planning things that. The university has changed, the university has grown and of course I’ve changed with it as I came to teach design and architecture, I became interested in historic preservation and we started a multi-disciplinary program back in the 1970s’. The historic preservation and you get a certificate from that, a certificate program which I thought at the time I still believe that it should be taught, it’s interdisciplinary, and that it’s a non-degree program at the present time, but I think that it should be part of tools of any designer or urban planner or urbanist or even geographers, geologists and all that, that they become acquainted with the knowledge of preserving what we’ve got and that’s important. One of the Cincinnati—certainly Over the Rhine—is probably the largest concentration of Victorian Architecture in the country. Things are changing there too, new constructions being handed, there are rules and regulations to hopefully try and make it more compatible with what’s existing in historic fabric, but that is an important thing. So, we don’t have buildings cropping out high rises and things, change the scale primarily. But the desire is there, the desire is increased, the pressure is there to build more housing and more things that they’ve talked about down there, eliminating much of the requirement for parking for construction, well that’s okay for many people. You’ve got a driver’s license?

JW: Yeah.

BG: And you do to? Well and you’ve got a car both of you?

JW: Yeah.

BG: Okay, well not everybody’s got a car but most people certainly, younger people and older people depend on their car. I haven’t ridden a bus in Cincinnati in decades. Although I live here because of the proximity to the university. In fact, for many years—you know well a little over 40 years I had an office over on Vine Street, Short Vine. Well there’s an interesting street, Vine street used to continue on to Coryville and wasn’t interrupted. Now it goes to Jefferson and jogs back. So they built a shopping center. There used to be a hill there, there was a water tower a water tank on the hill, right about where—oh, the parking lot for Krogers is. If you think about Vine Street coming up and going through, it was on the west side of Vine Street between there and Jefferson, a water tank. It’s hard to imagine and of course, urban renewal for Avondale-Coryville, we can get rid of that. And my office was a little house that’s still here, 2606 Vine Street. They filled in a gulley in the back, supposedly with the dirt filled from the hill. That wasn’t necessarily true but that was what the myth was, that they were going to use that to fill and they were going to put a parking lot in there. Behind those buildings on the east side of Short Vine on that block, the first block. So anyways then of course they added a shopping center that has been since torn down and rebuilt as the new Kroger store and the new Walgreens. Which doesn’t have enough parking if you’ve been there.

JW: Yeah.

BG: Totally inadequate parking because, they’d close the Kroger store at Walnut Hills, which Kroger claimed didn’t do adequate business to warrant keeping it open, which is probably true. But, new store—and the idea was that if you had a pharmacy in your drugstore, you want drive in, drive through. That’s the whole key. You don’t have a drive through pharmacy as part of your store or drugstore, you can compete. So, CVS built a drugstore up there on Mcmillan and Vine and they have a drive through. Kroger didn’t and Walgreens didn’t in the old shopping center. So, there’s an interesting problem or interesting change. Not necessarily all change is for the best. But anyway, the dynamic of the neighborhood will continue to change. Mt. Auburn has changed. There used to be a church at the corner of Auburn Avenue and McMillan which was the oldest—that was the first church at the top of the hill. And in fact, a developer bought it and tore it down, and now he wants to build an apartment building, he’s going to, because what is the expansion, they can rent them out. And more restaurants—and anyway that’s a whole other story. They even got a Target, well anyways. Cities are dynamic, they change and not necessarily always for the better, but Cincinnati has changed in many ways, slower than others. I think that trying to preserve the best of the past is important and that needs to be—and we need to save the best of the university. I mourned the loss of Wilson Auditorium, you remember where that was?

JW: No.

BG: Ah, well you know where those temporary buildings are on Clifton Avenue right across from DAAP?

JW: Yeah.

BG: Well, Wilson Auditorium was there. There was a picture of it in here [points to architecture book of UC]. Wilson Auditorium was a building built in the 30s—and they used to do—back before the college Conservatory of Music before they moved to campus, that’s where they had their theater. Of course, campus changed, the first part of it was that they built for the whole complex up there for the theater and music and all that up there. They built a building, which is basically gone, part of it was of course—the second phase of it became the auditorium for the school, which since then been remodeled. But the original part of the school, the college was a classroom building basically built over a parking garage. Done by an architect at the time the name was, Ed Schulting. Who was a prominent architect that was his last project, and the joke was that, it wasn’t a very good building, design wise, and they said he should have retired one building early [laughs]. But that’s beside—fortunately they got an architect, New York architect, Zion Payne’s firm to do it. The expansion of it, to do the remodeling of it of all the—the second theater was done before the late phase of the office building. But the—you know, but there was a major change to the campus when, it took the college conservatory, or the Cincinnati conservatory of music and the university took it over and moved it to main campus. I remember when I first came here, they tried to enlist faculty people to make telephone calls to people and get them to contribute. Any of you have done that?

JW: No.

BG: Well you know, as a young assistant professor I thought I’d probably get extra points that way. So I remember calling up one evening and, when I got this man, he said ‘where are you from and what are you doing?’ And I said, ‘I’m calling from the University of Cincinnati and about contribution.’ ‘University of Cincinnati,’ he said. ‘I used to teach at the college or the Conservatory of Music and the university took it over, and I didn’t get a pension.’ He said, ‘I taught there for decades and I didn’t get anything but social security.’ So that’s just one of the, probably that will get stricken away from the recording [laughs]. But, you know, physical change is goes along with the change of programs, programs are flexible, some come some go. Interesting thing with architecture is interesting, the co-op program is really Cincinnati’s engineering and architecture and other programs’ strong point. That’s one of the reasons for our success. I remember when I used to go to conferences, which was in Boston and I met a man and we were talking and he says, well my firm in Boston were really under pressure to hire MIT from Harvard graduates. So when anybody else comes looking for a job, well we haven’t got anything. But he says when a University of Cincinnati graduate comes in looking for a job, I want to talk to him because he said they’ve had experience. And that was many ways, opened the door for students. It wasn’t easy always, the co-op program in the 30s’ was very tough to find jobs. Because architects didn’t have jobs. The—but I remember when I first came, we had a faculty member who was part of the co-op program and his job was to find jobs for students and he was finding jobs in local firms because they had jobs for students back in the 30’s. Even though they didn’t have a lot of work, some of the bigger firms tried to accommodate them, it was hard to find jobs for students in those days, but it prevailed and fortunately that was the strength of the program. Now a few years ago, many years ago now they changed the program to a—not a professional program, now you have to get a master’s degree in architecture for your professional degree. You can get a bachelor’s in I guess architectural studies which is a four-year and the idea was that you would continue on and you would do more years and it was a six-year program anyways, so that you would continue on and get a master’s degree. Well one of the problems that they encountered is that many of the better students, don’t continue on. They stop going to UC, and where do they want to go to graduate school? ‘Well I want to go to Harvard, I want to go to MIT, well I want to go to Michigan,’ and that’s a problem. So some architectural schools are switching back to granting a professional undergraduate degree and which is really what you need is a professional degree to get a license. Again, pendulum swing so —what do are you studying? Okay well, you study Urban Studies. Well one of the real problems is finding jobs when you get out. Think of the poor English student, English Major or the History major, what do you do? Do you want to be a teacher in grade school or high school? Well, you’ve got to have, you know your licensing for that, you have to continue on, it’s difficult. Humanities are hard hit and so computers are big, right? Everyone wants to go into computer science. So anyway. Cities, educational programs, medical care, they’re all change, they move on. Some people just stay in the same house for 50 years [smiling and joking about himself].

JW: So you talked about a lot of other stuff and the next stuff, and the next, about students themselves I’m guessing you noticed a change in the diversity of students and the staff throughout your years?

BG: Well, I haven’t taught too much in 20 years, obviously concerning students today, they’re much more computer literate. It’s an assumption almost make that they come to school with a laptop. I remember when they first started to introduce computers this was a big deal. We had a computer lab you know. Now everybody has a computer, and they take notes on their computer sitting there typing away you know. Probably more and more I think the higher education is going to become more—you might say computerized or packaged. It doesn’t make sense if you had an outstanding historian, maybe on the faculty of Princeton or Brown or Berkeley that they can’t—students can’t—watch a lecture by them at their leisure. Not necessarily a time and benefit from it, and go someplace, which is important, seminars with people, faculty or upper level graduate students where they can discuss a topic. In fact, in theory you could probably pack a lot more education in that kind of program. And I think it’s talked about a lot. Faculty to a degree resist that, you now. They don’t want to be replaced by somebody at Harvard [laughs] that’s never been to Cincinnati. But what we’ve done with of course at the university is unfortunately is, more and more graduate students, or upper level graduate students are doing the teaching at relatively low salaries. In fact, they qualify for food stamps on some cases, which is pretty sorry. And to find jobs in academia is very tough today, it’s tough. To get tenure, wow, that’s a major accomplishment. And in fact, a lot of people in the state legislature would like to do away with tenure. You know, faculty people all they do is sit around and drink coffee and you know—don’t do any work. Well that’s, I never thought that but on the other hand, still those are changes and attitude of the public towards academics. Students certainly—hopefully that’s, students are better equipped in some areas and maybe in others, like I don’t know her by her if someone has knowledge of the history of the city, or history, of the state, and or the country that they come from necessarily. It’s assumed that somehow you get it but you don’t, unless its taught through here or you’re forced to read it. Not that it can’t be compressed, but if you’re not exposed to it, you’re not going to necessarily seek it out. So that’s the question.

JW: So—okay you’ve talked about a lot of the questions I have and then so I have—Where would you like to see UC going in the future?

BG: Well I hope that UC maintains a co-op programs because I think that’s extremely important in higher education but, I do think that you also need to be exposed to the liberal arts too. You cannot just focus on a technical program and not have any philosophical background for it, for life it I think that’s important. Without—you have to broaden your experience and exposure. I used to think as an architect, new buildings are new would solve all the problems of living. All we had to do was build brand new, and everything would be wonderful. Well that isn’t what the case, not at all. And in fact, you can get along fairly well in old buildings. But now, I think that the university needs to respond to the fact that it’s a dynamic situation and they’re trying, no question about that. Think about aging population that is a common, and of course we have programs for the study of the aging or the retirees I should say. That’s very good, the continued education program. We used to have when I first started, we used to have night school and you could get a degree from evening college which is interesting. And I used to teach some classes there. They don’t really regard it as quite as up to standard as you got your degree in evening college but there was some engineering degrees you could get which was interesting. And of course, there were a lot of lawyers in this city that used to go to the evening law school that was located in the old YMCA on Central Parkway. Became Northern Kentucky’s Law School, and but the—the idea that people could get an education and still work and if they want to improve is something that I think is important and should be encouraged, but—you know—paying for it is tough, tuition is high. That’s one of the real problems the university has is finding ways to keep students without forcing them to go bankrupt or force their parents to go bankrupt. So that’s a whole problem. You know another problem I just mentioned—everything, the emphasis on everything is new. Well, things get old and when they get old, they either get torn down if they’re not taken care of or you got to spend money to take care of them and that’s another problem we have in this country. They talk about the state of Ohio roads, and they just increase the gasoline tax to help pay for the roads, and some people are saying, ‘wow, I got to pay more to commute because you’ve raised my gasoline tax and you didn’t give me anymore money.’ You can also say that’s a regressive tax, because if you make $150,000 or $200,000 a year, you know a few extra cents on your gasoline bill as you commute to your office or your campus or whatever it is or hospital medical hospital doesn’t make any difference. But if you’re the janitor —or the, the you know—has to commute to in a car, that extra 10 or 15 or 30 cents a gallon, that’s a big deal. That’s the same thing for the cost of education. You can say it’s good to have a co-op and that does help to some degree for some expenses, but they have to find a way I think, the universities, the higher education needs to control the cost or some way for some people can get an education. Not everybody needs to go to a university that’s true, you still need plumbers, or electricians and things like that and painters to keep up the old buildings. These are problems that society faces, and the university is a microcosm of society in that respect.

JW: So, during you time at the university, what were you most proud of that you accomplished?

BG: [laughs] Well I’m —pleased we had—we could start a reservation program. I served on a —urban conservation board back in the 60s. We were responsible for buildings that were protected city ordinance. This goes back to the whole history of historic preservation, which basically in this country to a degree, well started back to the 1930s, but I won’t go into a history lesson of historic preservation. But, we realized, that it was realized the city needed to protect certain historic areas. So we established some historic districts, one is Dana street in the West End and the other one is Lionel park area, these are the two main ones there are more now. And certain city buildings, city hall, music hall were under the purview of the board and basically, I got appointed on that board. And one of our part time faculty people at UC a man named George Wrath, I admired him, and he taught history as a volunteer teacher. He taught senior architectural history on Saturday mornings and donated his money back to the college, so he taught for nothing because he just enjoyed it, and wanted to serve and had gone to UC as an undergraduate and became a partner at a prestigious firm. But anyway, so I was on that board then I got appointed to the state historic sites preservation advisory board. Which was a board that reviewed all things that were put on the national register of historic places which was —a process that was creating historic places back in 1965. So, the state had a board, that was and that was a complicated process, but all this was under the national park service. Anyway, so I served at that board for a long time and then I fired, because of that I was chairman of that board for 5 years then first started teaching preservation courses as a freebie. I was interested in it and it served the students well and they were interested in it and in fact that’s how a couple of courses started at UC especially in the architectural program. When I first went there, we didn’t have a course—what would I call building construction. Which was kind of strange. Because it was assumed that the students would get their hands-on experience in a construction working or an architect’s office. Well, architects said well it would be nice if they started a co-op in their second year or second half and they had some knowledge of how buildings are structurally put together. Then they started a free course in building construction, then they finally hired somebody to do that. We’d had structural courses, but it wasn’t actually you know how to put a couple of pieces of wood together, but any way. Those are changes. But putting a historic preservation program we, there was interest, a planning professor was interested in it, planning because I got a degree in graduate planning from the University of Cincinnati back in the 1960s after I came here as a part time student as you might say. That time there was a graduate program in city planning or community planning and an undergraduate program. The undergraduate program was in DAAP and the graduate program was in the graduate school, it was sort of an offshoot from the geography department, that’s how it really got started. And so they had a program. One of the things was that, our graduates were getting jobs in planning because it was a hot thing. The federal government said if you wanted to get money from us, you have to have a planning program and a plan developed for communities and communities started saying, well hey. And then we started health planning program and that’s still in operation. So that’s important. And so we had planning people involved in the planning process and historic preservation was important and there was a man in the geology department that was interested in it because part of the preservation program was for the feds was the archaeological sites. Not all archaeological sites are in ancient Greece, that’s under the auspices of the classic program. We had you might say two archaeological programs, one in the classics which was just that going in to classical investigation and then we had, you might say North American Archaeology and we had a geography and we had people in business school realize that hey real estate is important. So let’s establish—and we all got together as a faculty people and say let’s try and develop a program that can bring students from various disciplines together to study this problem of historic preservation, of saving old buildings, or what we would like to say is saving the best of the past and how to protect them. And that’s how our certificate program came to about. And it isn’t, I say again it’s a something I feel certificates are some kind of an extra thing that you do in your major. In my way of thinking every architect that graduates should have a knowledge of saving old buildings, not just tearing down everything and building new because—truthfully a lot of architectural practices are involved with a lot of old buildings or existing buildings.

JW: Well that looks like everything and was there anything that you would like to tell me that we haven’t really talked about?

BG: I can’t think of anything. [Laughs]