Eccentric home of OU professor for sale
Aethelred Eldridge’s home outside Athens is as idiosyncratic as its former owner.
With its crooked windows, artdrenched walls and ceilings and rooted-in-nature vibe, the house seems a living embodiment of Eldridge, the Ohio University artist and professor who died in 2018 after a long career of battling convention.
And now, the home is available for the first time in half a century. Sitting on 23 acres at the end of a long dirt road about six miles north of Athens, it is listed for $289,000.
The house consists of an 1830s log cabin flanked by two wings Eldridge added on his own. With its crooked timber and angled windows, the home is something of a mashup of Hobbit Shire and Appalachian Hippy.
The house became the center of an artistic and spiritual movement that Eldridge founded with his wife at the time, the artist Alexandra Eldridge.
Sometimes referred to as Golganooza, the property was once home to the “church and school of William Blake,” the English poet, artist and spiritual leader who served as Eldridge’s muse.
“Ethelred’s property became a magnet for creative minds from around the world, and his guests included everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Maharishi,” according to a mini-documentary on Eldridge called “Aethelred the Unready.”
The regular Sunday “church” gatherings at the home became legendary around Athens.
“I was friends with Aethelred in the 1970s, when it was quite the place,” said Liz Maule, the Athens Real Estate Co. agent listing the property. “My husband was a professor back then. We were part of a group of artists who gathered out there, usually every Sunday. There were potlucks, dances, just lots of gatherings there, of artists, imaginaries, poets.”
Born James Edward Leonard in 1930 in Monroe, Michigan, Eldridge adopted the name Aethelred Eldridge, a reference to an ancient British king, according to a 2001 Dispatch profile.
After graduating from the University of Michigan and a stint as a Naval officer, Eldridge joined the Art Department at Ohio University in 1958 and launched a career distinguished by eccentricity and talent: Four of Eldridge’s murals can still be found on Ohio University’s campus, including a 50-by-80-foot work on Seigfred Hall.
Eldridge’s lectures were famous for their stream-of-consciousness delivery — and for their ease. His “Art in Your Life” class was voted “easiest” class at OU several years running.
According to one student in the documentary, Eldridge’s lecture notes were scribbled on paper plates. For his final exam — the only test of the semester — he passed out the plates and instructed students to write anything they wanted on them.
Eldridge’s famous energy and creativity extended to his home, which he constantly altered, treating it as something of a domestic canvas.
In the 1970s and 1980s, he added wings onto the log cabin that served as the core of the house. The wings, in sort of a rustic Tudor style, brought the house to about 1,818 square feet.
Inside are two or three bedrooms, depending on how one room is used, and a bathroom served by a cistern and compost toilet. No running water, sewer or septic field serves the property. The home is heated by wood and by electric baseboards.
Walls, ceilings and even floors and cabinets are covered with Eldridge’s paintings, and a nature motif is carved into one door.
“His property was his artwork,” said John Kortlander, a professor at Columbus College of Art & Design who was a student of Eldridge’s from 1979 to 1981.
“He was always building, he always was rearranging, remaking, modifying,” Kortlander added. “He had painted on the walls and ceilings, painted and repainted them. He was well-known for redoing things.”
The property echoed Eldridge’s teachings, said Kortlander, who helped film Eldridge at the property in the 1980s.
“His lectures were all very free-flowing, very performance-based, really designed to open people’s minds to make them think in less linear and in unexpected ways,” Kortlander said. “His class was called Art in Your Life, it was really about the act of living itself as a creative endeavor.”
Kortlander would like to see the property turned into an artist-in-residence house or a museum house that could be rented but kept artistically intact.
In addition to the main house, the property includes several outbuildings, also decorated with art, all overlooking a pond. A large log structure with a stage that served as the “church” building was destroyed by arson in the 1980s.
After teaching art at Ohio University from 1958 to 2014, Eldridge died in November 2018. The house passed on to his sons, Saxon and Sebastian, who declined to comment for this article.
Even three years after Eldridge’s death, the house has continued to command an audience. Maule said interest in the property started “turning into a carnival” once she listed it on Sept. 9, forcing her to limit tours of the property to strictly qualified buyers.
“There’s been a lot of interest from people who knew him from back in the day, who remembered the place, and had a lot of great memories there,” she said.
Asked what sort of buyer would be interested in such an eccentric house, Maule replied, “I have no idea,” adding, “maybe someone who would appreciate what he developed there, what his vision was, who wouldn’t destroy or mock it.” jweiker@dispatch.com @Jimweiker