One of OSU’s most photographed Oval landmarks, Orton Hall features a bell tower that tolls the quarter hours, and chimes lovely melodies across campus. Designed by noted Columbus Architects Yost & Packard, Orton Hall was built in 1893 and named for Edward Orton, OSU’s first president and Ohio’s first state geologist. Orton Hall was built from native Ohio rocks which start with strata of bedrock at its foundation and culminate at the top of the tower with gargoyles and dinosaurs, making it a geological textbook to be read from the bottom up. Orton’s son, Edward Orton, Jr., built the structure in honor of his father, and the large boulder in front – which came from nearby Iuka Ravine – was dragged to the spot by geology students.
The Orton Geological Museum is open to the public and contains papers and many paintings from the Orton family. The Hall is also reported to be haunted by Dr. Orton himself who, when not seen in the tower, will be in the library reminding students to study.
Orton Hall’s neighbor, Mendenhall Laboratory, was completed in 1905 and named to honor Dr. Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, for whom the famous Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska is named. Like Orton, both he and the building are storied treasures. Ohio-born Mendenhall was an accomplished high school educator, so much so, that despite having no degrees, he was recruited to the original 1873 OSU faculty as a professor of Physics and Mechanics. Mendenhall also worked for the Meiji Japanese government at Imperial University where he became interested in earthquakes and helped create the first seismological institute. Later as an OSU trustee, however, his work “was just a little off” when Ohio Stadium was being built. He thought the stadium should include no more than 45,000 seats because there was no way 63,000 people would ever attend an OSU football game.
Today, Mendenhall Lab has a seismograph 300 feet deep in a 10 inch hole in the basement which was installed by the U.S. Geological Survey during a 1993 renovation. The building also features artwork by David Culver, including a stone wall, a floor with spiral banners of inlaid stone, and a series of geological panels combining aesthetic designs with informational samples of stones and minerals.