Changes at Raintree House

Lee W. Formwalt

Nearly thirty-five years ago former OAH Executive Secretary Thomas D. Clark negotiated with Indiana University (IU) Chancellor Herman B Wells to move the national headquarters of the Organization of American Historians from Salt Lake City, Utah, to the IU campus in Bloomington. The chancellor found room for the growing association in an out-of-the-way two-story antebellum home owned by the university near the eastern edge of campus. The Stallknecht House, as it was referred to then, had been purchased by the IU Foundation in 1969. The following year Professor Clark, who was writing his multivolume history of the university, began staffing a modest office in the soon to be renamed “Raintree House.” The new name derived from the presence of one of the largest Raintrees (Koelreuteria paniculata) in southern Indiana that grows adjacent to the house.

Raintree House has had a long and interesting history. William Millen, a member of the antislavery Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, left South Carolina around the time of the Nullification Crisis and made his way to Bloomington, Indiana, where he and his wife purchased 160 acres of land in 1839. Several years later they built the two-story Greek Revival brick home OAH now occupies. Local tradition claims that the house, built on a typical double-pile Georgian plan, was part of the Underground Railroad. Although we have yet to find any physical evidence to support this claim, we hope to explore certain sealed off portions of the attic for possible evidence when the university begins a major restoration of the house in the next year or two. In 1882, the Rogers family of Bloomington bought the house and occupied it for nearly a half-century. It was then owned by several individuals connected in one way or another with Indiana University, the last of whom were Anna and Newton Stallknecht. Newton Stallknecht bought the house in 1949 when he came to Bloomington to teach in the IU Philosophy Department. Twenty years later, he sold the house to the IU Foundation which transferred ownership to the Trustees of IU, OAH’s landlord for more than three decades.

Like many state universities around the country, IU is experiencing difficult financial times and repair and maintenance on many campus buildings, including Raintree House, has been neglected. For more than thirty years, only essential repairs have been made on the structure and the building has suffered greatly from neglect. This year, our leak-prone roof was temporarily patched by placing a tarpaulin on its most porous spots. This fall, we were able to persuade university officials that the roof, in its current condition, could not make it through another Indiana winter without causing irreparable harm to the rest of the house. So this month work is to begin on replacing the old roof.

Through growing attention from Bloomington-area residents interested in historic preservation, just last month the obscure Raintree House was on a local homes tour sponsored by Bloomington Restorations, Inc. One hundred or more Bloomingtonians traipsed through the house, many of them expressing astonishment at this undiscovered local treasure. Meanwhile, in the background, OAH Deputy Director John Dichtl led a process lasting nearly three years of placing Raintree House on the National Register of Historic Places. In October 2004, we learned that the application for the home’s historic designation had been approved in Washington.

Recognizing the significance of a National Register building on its campus, Indiana University is now committed to restoring the building, a half-million dollar project. OAH is working with IU in applying for state preservation funds and other grants that will help cover some of the costs.

As I write this column, the house is abuzz with activity, as one-third of our staff moves to new space in a house across the street provided by the university. Prior to this week we had twenty staff persons occupying seven rooms and two hallways in Raintree House. To say that we were crowded would be an understatement. Although it will cost us additional monthly rent, the house at 111 North Bryan Avenue will give staff the space and quiet they need to more effectively and efficiently carry out their mission of serving the members and the profession.

The absence of six staff members and their offices from Raintree House has brought a certain calm to the old building at 112 North Bryan. One can more easily recapture the elegance and space in the wide hallways as well as the airiness of the high-ceilinged rooms. Like many an old house, this one has its ghostly legends. When I arrived here five years ago, former Business Manager Jeanette Chafin and other longtime staff members recounted the history of some of these ghosts. Supposedly a servant of one of the nineteenth-century households was cleaning clothes in the basement and fell into a tub of lye and died. Whether this is the same ghost that leaves a strong scent of roses when she passes through the front hall we’re not sure! Jeanette warned me that should I work here at night I would hear noises that some were convinced were made by spectral inhabitants in the attic and basement. And indeed you can hear noises, typical of the creaking in 160-year old houses. There are also bats in the attic, critters that Tom Clark complained about in the 1970s and whose progeny are still with us in 2004.

As a trained historian, I dismissed the ghostly legends as sheer nonsense. I certainly don’t believe in ghosts. Earlier this year, however, I was working late with another staff member and I was standing in the doorway to my office which opens onto the main floor hallway. I’m not sure if he noticed that I had turned pale when out of the corner of my right eye I glimpsed a shadowy wraith in a long white dress. I turned quickly to the hall but it was gone. My colleague asked, “Do you smell roses? This is the hallway where they claim you could smell roses.” We did not smell any roses and I still don’t believe in ghosts, but that was an eerie experience!

I don’t know whether the ghosts of Raintree appreciate the less crowded state of the house, but I can assure you the OAH staff does. We love our old house and we’re happy to show it off to visitors who occasionally stop by. Should any of you visit south central Indiana, please visit your OAH national headquarters at Raintree House. We would be glad to give you the cook’s tour of our historic treasure.