1739 n. hiGh St.
the ohio union
At first, Thurber did not apply himself at Ohio State. “One entire year, he just kind of dropped out and didn’t tell anybody,” Tootle says, adding that he traded the classroom for the public library. By his senior year, boosted by his membership in Phi Kappa Psi, he was one of 16 students selected to join the Sphinx honorary society. Spots throughout campus acknowledge Thurber, but one recent addition is a limestone panel on the south side of the new Ohio Union, which features his likeness. “We chose Thurber, Bellows and Lichtenstein to represent Ohio artists, as they embodied various areas of art,” says the Ohio Union’s Beth Ullum.
124 E. 14th AvE.
Phi KaPPa Psi fraternity
Thurber’s admission to Phi Kappa Psi (still housed in the same building that it was in the teens) was an especially meaningful event for him. “A lot of those fraternity brothers that he had remained friends throughout his life,” Tootle says. Foremost among them was playwright (and later film director) Elliott Nugent. More sociable than Thurber, Nugent coaxed his chums into letting the nascent scribe in. “Some of the fellas weren’t sure who he was or why or whatever, and then [Nugent] really made the case,” Tootle says. “He said, ‘He’s a little shy and you may not know him, but boy, this guy is just really good.’”
1000 GrEEnlAwn AvE.
Green Lawn Cemetery
IllustratIon: MIchaela schuett; photos: courtesy the thurber house
Thurber’s gravestone, Tootle says, is “just a small, unpretentious stone,” located near the main building at Green Lawn Cemetery. A small marker, perhaps, for a Columbus native who truly made it big.
14 E. GAy St.
310 S. hiGh St.
79 E. StAtE St.
It seems newspapers were part of the marrow of the Thurber family. “Thurber and his brothers and his dad would do a lot of newspaper contests, where there’d be some kind of a puzzle in the newspaper and you’d figure it out,” says Tootle, adding that one 1916 Columbus Monitor contest netted tickets to the World Series. After leaving Ohio State, Thurber found work at The Columbus Dispatch, but the paper’s quick-turnaround deadlines would haunt him. “Whenever I’m in the Midwest, I still wake up with a start, wondering what time it is and thinking I have to cover City Hall by one o’clock,” he told The Columbus Dispatch Magazine in 1959, by which time the paper had moved from East Gay Street to South Third Street.
For about a decade in the 1940s and 1950s, Thurber’s mother and brother Robert set themselves up in what was then the Great Southern Hotel. There is a lesson here: If you stay long enough at a hotel, you just might get a bar named after you. In tribute to the Thurber family’s association with the hotel, the Westin Columbus operates Thurber’s Bar (the logo for which features Thurber’s famed round spectacles). The Westin’s Phil BeMiller says the Thurber artwork featured on its walls constitutes “the second largest collection of such work in the country.”
After Thurber penned a play, could he really have premiered it anywhere but Columbus? Thus, “A Thurber Carnival” (which subsequently won a Tony Award) debuted at the Hartman Theatre on Jan. 7, 1960. During its heyday, the theater hosted out-of-town tryouts for a dazzling array of shows, including William Inge’s “Picnic,” starring Paul Newman. Open since 1911, the Hartman became the go-to place for plays during an era when many other local theaters were switching to film exhibition. “It maintained live theater,” says local historian Dick Barrett. The Hartman building was demolished in 1971, and the Hyatt on Capitol Square sprang up in its place.
the CoLumbus DisPatCh
Great southern hoteL
hartman theatre
Columbus Monthly • December 2013
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