Moment in Time (December 23, 2021)
This photograph is the home at 1430 Cambridge Blvd, on the southeast corner of Cambridge and Third. The house was built by Columbus realtor William A. Jackson. The longest residency in the home was the Toops family, from 1938 until 1986. OSU Prof. Herbert Toops is shown in the inset from 1941.
One of the first families to occupy the home was the Jackson family, William and Catherine (Murphy) Jackson and their four children. William Jackson was a Columbus realtor when they purchased the house in 1917. His office (and home) was on Summit Street near Iuka Ravine. Records indicate that Jackson owned several properties in the Grandview area, and a filling station at 157 West 5th Avenue. (One conflicting record indicates that Jackson designed and built the home upon purchasing the lot in 1917, rather than the 1900 construction date shown in the Auditor’s site.)
One of the first families to occupy the home was the Jackson family, William and Catherine
(Murphy) Jackson and their four children. William Jackson was a Columbus realtor when they purchased the house in 1917. His office (and home) was on Summit Street near Iuka Ravine. Records indicate that Jackson owned several properties in the Grandview area, and a filling station at 157 West 5th Avenue. (One conflicting record indicates that Jackson designed and built the home upon purchasing the lot in 1917, rather than the 1900 construction date shown in the Auditor’s site.)
In 1925 Jackson built a 1000 square foot detached garage with a mother in law suite over it to the east of the house, perhaps to provide a space for Catherine’s mother Lydia to live. The 1930 census indicates that she was in residence at the address.
During the Depression, Jackson faced financial hardship, and he took in boarders to make ends meet. In 1934 the ownership of the home was transferred to Ohio State Savings, and by 1936 the home had been converted into four units. The Columbus city directory lists four families at this address, including the Jacksons. By 1937 it is listed as vacant, and in late 1937 Catherine Jackson sold the home at sheriff’s sale to the Homeowners Loan Corporation. The HLC was a federal program developed from 1933 legislation intended to help homeowners struggling to maintain ownership.
In 1938 Herbert and Laura Toops moved into the house, and bought it from HLC in 1942. They owned the home until 1986, raising their five children there, all of whom attended Grandview schools, before selling it to Roger and Rebecca Alban. In 1946 Toops purchased the 95’x191’ property to the south in order to create a large garden, and planted many fruit trees on it.
Herbert Toops was a prominent professor of Psychology at Ohio State, authoring over 150 academic articles in his 42 years at the University. Toops obtained his undergraduate and masters degrees from OSU and his doctorate from Columbia University in 1921. After several years working for the U.S. Army as a consultant to the Secretary of War John W. Weeks, and the U.S. Department of Labor, he returned to OSU in 1923 as a professor of psychology, and became the head of the Statistical Laboratories at the University.
Toops became renowned for his work with standardized testing. He was the creator of the Ohio State Psychological Examination (OSPE), which at one time was given to incoming freshmen at universities across the nation to test their aptitude for college. Toops also became involved in data processing as a result of his statistical analyses, and because of his work IBM donated a huge computer to his department, which was OSU’s first computer. In 1975 the Board of Trustees named a prize after him for creativity in psychology.
A recent owner of the home was repairing some damage to a wall in the living room when he discovered there was a large staircase with newel post that had been covered up by the wall. The enclosing of the staircase most likely happened at the time the home was divided into the apartments. According to one of the Toops’ sons, the family never knew that the hidden staircase was there.
(Other Arts and Crafts and Craftsman homes can be found on the free History Walks app Eclectic Abodes tour at grandviewhistorywalks.org)