"The buildings are twenty-four in number, including school house, laboratory, museum, 'rough house,' infirmary, dormitory, dwellings, shops and barns. The land comprises about 200 acres. Eighteen acres are in orange orchard. There are six tennis courts, four baseball fields, a Gymkhana track, the rest being in pastures, canyons and hillsides. The boys have about ten 'shacks' in the canyons where they spend an occasional Saturday night." - The Ojai, 1919

During the 1870s and '80s, ranches in the East End of the Ojai Valley began to experiment with citrus and during the same time, a small private boys' school was being started by Sherman Day Thacher. The Pierpont family even opened a small hotel on their property to accommodate the parents of Thacher's students.
When Sherman married Eliza Blake in 1896, he built a new home for his bride. The house was constructed on the school grounds, using plans that were drawn by his brother Edward Thacher.
Edward had studied architecture at Yale University and L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He had worked for a short time as an architect before giving it up and coming to the Ojai Valley to manage a local orange ranch.
The house he designed was built to take advantage of the breezes, with the porch styled after the Japanese theory of openness. Almost every room had an outside door. Six children grew up there, so several additions were added during the early years. The interior includes a double brick fireplace and built-in bookcases. The building was completed in 1896.
Edward had designed the school dining room building in 1895, with help from the famous Santa Barbara architect Samuel Ilsley. Ilsley had just finished designing a small hotel for the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito and, after helping Edward with the school dining room, Ilsley left Santa Barbara and moved to Chicago to write plays. Later he returned to Santa Barbara, and it was Ilsley's Filipino servant who introduced the yo-yo to this country.
The Thacher School dining room is a large, irregular, two-story structure with a hip roof. The windows are multipaned, double-hung and arranged in rows across both floors. Above the main floor is a decorative pressed-wood frieze in a ribbon design. The rafters are exposed under the eaves and the siding is board and batten.
The building functions as both dining room-kitchen and administrative offices. The original stone fireplace was built of rock that was hauled from the end of Gridley Road. Originally, the building served as the parlor and dining room-kitchen with the upstairs used as the school dormitory, library and nurse's office. Wings have been added and a pergola connects the building to the auditorium.
The admissions office was completed in 1911 and it was built as the main building at the school. The building has a mission facade with bell tower and entry arcade. The gable roof extends over the building with its exposed beams underneath. A recessed walkway on one side of the building is supported by arched columns. The interior of the building has an impressive brick fireplace and the ceilings are open beam.
The building was designed by Arthur Benton, a Los Angeles architect who specialized in the mission style. Benton had designed numerous villas in the Montecito hills, the All Saints by the Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito, and the charming Mission Inn in Riverside.
A second building at the school designed by Benton is the upper school dormitory. This building, though built the same year as the admissions office, is completely different in design.
The upper school dormitory is three stories tall and shingled, with two prominent gabled wings that extend from the main section to create a center entrance. Above the entry is a recessed balcony and topping the balcony is a mission revival parapet with the date 1911; below it is a classical frieze. The characters in the frieze are on horseback, and were apparently favorites of Sherman Thacher; he had been very fond of Greek mythology and horseback riding was also a major sport at the school.
Another attractive building was the Thacher library, built in 1928 and designed by the well-known architect Carleton Winslow, master of the Spanish colonial revival style. The library building was designed to blend with the mission revival style building built next to it, and an arcade was built connecting the two buildings.
The library building is stucco with a tile roof. The main feature is the large, arched, leaded-glass windows on both the front and side. The front gabled parapet has a small rose window with the large arched window below, flanked by decorative relief panels.
At the same time, Winslow was designing a new public library for downtown Ojai. Winslow had made a name for himself by designing libraries and churches throughout Southern California. Among them were St. Paul's Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles, St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Del Mar, Mary Star of the Sea in La Jolla, and the First Congregational Church in Santa Barbara. The most striking of all of Winslow's churches is the Ojai Presbyterian Church.
The Thacher chapel was originally known as the Hughes laboratory. The money for the building's construction was a gift from millionaire Howard Hughes, who had been a Thacher School student at one time.
The Hughes laboratory building was designed by Austen Pierpont, a self-taught architect who had an excellent reputation throughout the Ojai Valley and Southern California. He designed in the popular styles of the period, ranging from the English Tudor and cottage styles of the late teens and '20s through the Spanish colonial style and into the modern period of stucco and glass of the 1940s and 1950s.
The laboratory was built in 1936 in the mission style with an arched opening that included a bell. A recessed circular window was directly below the bell. Stone steps and mission tile on the patio connected the neighboring classrooms and library to the building and, by doing so, it created a unified architectural theme with the mission and Spanish colonial revival styles. In 1965, the western portion was converted into a chapel.
In 1937, Pierpont designed and built the middle school dormitory. The long, irregular-shaped, two-story building is stucco on the lower half and board-and-batten siding on the upper half. Outside stairways and arched corridors lead to the room entrances. The second story balconies have a wide overhang. A stone foundation and low retaining walls surround portions of the building, which is then shaded by mature eucalyptus trees to add just the right amount of character.
The Thacher Road home of Alvord Dodge was moved to the Thacher campus in 1946. The two-story Craftsman-style house was designed by the prominent Pasadena architect Myron Hunt in 1906. Hunt had gained a reputation for outstanding buildings around Southern California, including the Edward Libbey house in Ojai. Hunt designed all of the buildings for Occidental College and had been part of the group that designed the "Millionaires Colony," now known as Palos Verdes. Hunt would add to his reputation by designing the Huntington Library in San Marino.
The Dodge house was moved to the Thacher campus for use as a dormitory, due to the lack of building material for new housing during World War II. In 1953, the main section of the home of Sherman and Eliza Thacher was moved off of the campus and onto the Thacher Road property that was left vacant after the Dodge house was moved to the school campus.
These are just a few of the outstanding buildings that have helped to reflect the quality of life that the Thacher students have been enjoying for more than 100 years.

"Thus have the charms of the Ojai Valley and the surrounding mountains, the strength-giving climate of Southern California, and the standards of scholarship and character always insisted on, developed a unique school that draws boys from all parts of the country and sends them back to their homes better and stronger men, ready to render the service of good citizens." - The Ojai, 1919

© 2000 The Ojai Valley News

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