1914

Model-T's ruled, flappers were bobbing their hair and Ohio State had less than 8,000 students. With only the bottom two floors completed & the third floor an unfurnished attic, botanists, zoologists and entomologists moved into the Botany & Zoology Building at 1735 Neil Avenue.

1. Dwight DeLong, an entomology professor who died in 1984, remembered moving furniture into the building via the long, long front steps; he also remembered the university's president. Do you?

1918

At some point in these years, WWI began (more than 400 students officially withdrew to volunteer for military service) and James Thurber tried to pass a botany course on one of B&Z's finished floors. He never did and he writes about his failure to do so in My Life and Hard Times.

2. Ohio Stadium had yet to be built; it was finished in...?

1932

The country was in the throes of the Great Depression. A sub-basement, a basement, and first floor were added and the third floor was finally made useable. The B&Z building may have been the only campus building ever to have had a sign in one of its entrance stairwells that said "Up to the Basement." George Washington Rightmire was university president.

1948

WWII was over and to alleviate the space shortage in a university bursting at the seams with returning G.I.s, the B&Z annex was built just north of B&Z.

3. Who was minding the university?

1949

A new headhouse with attached greenhouses were built.

1950

Two top stories were added to the north wing and a south wing, 113 feet long, extending west from the original building was constructed, consisting of four stories and a sub-basement with a tunnel connecting the sub-basement to the headhouse.

4. The University Athletic Council officially adopted what term?

1962

John Kennedy was in the White House, students still dressed up to go to class and a pilot from Ohio was about to make space history. Five-story additions were completed at the west ends of both B&Z wings. Novice Gail Fawcett was university president.

5. Three years later TBDBITL would make some history of its own by?

1992

The old, crumbling greenhouses were torn down & replaced with new, modern greenhouse space on top of the 12th Avenue Garage.

6. E. Gordon Gee was president, but who knows what that "E" stood for...?

2002

Renamed Jennings Hall to honor friend of the college and former Ohio State University President Edward H. Jennings.

2003

In June of 2003, a carefully planned mass exodus of Jennings by its three occupying departments into their new, modern quarters in Aronoff left the historic building nearly empty for the first time in 88 years. It awaits renovation and a new life.

2005

Renovation of Jennings Hall begins.