Citizen Journalist

by Mike Martin

January 26,2008

In historic Columbia, remembering family histories

On Feb. 5 in the Tiger Hotel Ballroom, the Historic Preservation Commission will recognize Columbia's 100th Most Notable Historic Property.

Nine other properties also will be honored in an annual event that emphasizes preservation's most important point: The past comes alive when, as the stories here illustrate, we remember who lived or worked there.

The Prunty Dynasty
Selected for notable historic property honors in 2007, 1719 University Ave. – the home of former Columbia mayor Clyde Wilson and his wife, Betty, a local attorney – comes with a family history as unforgettable as its steel design.

When Stephens College recruited Merle Prunty Sr. as its first dean of students in 1934, the former superintendent of the Tulsa School District and National Junior Honor Society co-founder moved his family to Columbia from Oklahoma. Prunty built the Wilson home in 1936, using steel plate construction to shield his wife Grace from her greatest fear, a Midwestern tornado that never came.

Merle's daughter, Mary Lee Prunty Johnston, grew up in Clyde and Betty's home. A starting pitcher on the then-University High School boy's baseball team, Mary Lee became one of the nation's first female engineers, joining IBM in 1942.

Mary Lee Johnston also studied early childhood development at Rutgers University; her first love was always education. She and husband Lennie, who was related to the founders of Johnston Paint and Supply, returned to Columbia in 1951, where Mary Lee opened the well known Children's Center on Hinkson Avenue. She died at age 82 just three years ago.

Widely regarded as one of the world's top authorities on the geography of the American South, Mary Lee's brother, Merle Prunty Jr., founded the University of Georgia Department of Geology and Geography in 1946. More importantly, he wrote a series of seminal papers on how plantations shaped the antebellum landscape. With scholarly analysis referenced even today, Dr. Prunty used geography to re-cast Southern history, mapping the slow, sad decimation of settlers who forsook their land for cotton, slavery and greed.

Merle Jr.'s son Wyatt, the grandson of the man and woman who built Clyde and Betty Wilson's house, today directs the Sewanee Writers' Conference, one of the most influential writing convocations in the world. A nationally known poet, Prunty is widely identified with a literary movement called "New Formalism." Writing in the New York Times Book Review, critic Melanie Rehak observed that Prunty has devoted his career to "examining the ways in which human experience is made up of small traditions bound together into a larger story."

The house at Westmount's edge
It's a mystery to most folks, a forlorn but stately old house at the end of a picturesque street that's been vacant for years. The family home of Columbia dentist Clifton Faris Elzea, the 1931 Tudor-style mansion at 710 Westmount, rests on an 8-acre lot that slowly descends to the Katy Trail.

Born in 1895, Elzea served during World War I as a first lieutenant in the dental corps and in World War II as a captain in Missouri National Guard. He practiced dentistry in Columbia for nearly 70 years, from 1919 until 1986. Dr. Elzea's son, Rowland Procter Elzea, preceded him in death by just a year.

After graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a fine art degree, Rowland Elzea began a 35-year career at the Delaware Art Museum, breaking "new ground in the field of art history scholarship through his organization of nearly 500 exhibitions," read his 1995 Columbia Daily Tribune obituary. "From his early days as curator of the pre-Raphaelite collection to his most recent tenure as an associate director and chief curator, the collections grew from less than 800 to more than 11,000 works of art."

In 1993, Rowland Elzea retired and moved to Scotland. As an honorary research fellow at the University of Glasgow, he helped publish the letters of American painter James McNeill Whistler. Shortly before his death, he was editing the diaries of U.S. artist John French Sloan.

The Historic Preservation Commission hasn't yet designated the Elzea home "notable," but one of their charges is to seek out history where it happened, so maybe it will receive the designation next year.

Most Notable Historic Properties for 2008
• 1601 Stoney Brook Place–ca. 1825, Columbia's Oldest House, owners Gregory and Linda Bartels
• 206 Hitt Street–The Belvedere Apartments
• 211 Hitt Street–The Beverly Apartments
• 214 St. Joseph Street – Owner Elizabeth Westergaard, ca. 1900
• 511 Westwood Avenue–Home of Kathryn Bear and Hank Ottinger, ca. 1930
• 211 Westwood Avenue–Home of Sam Goodfellow and Judith Goodman, ca. 1904
• 1115 Locust Street–Sacred Heart Catholic Ch.
• 2011 North Country Club Drive–Owner Martha John, ca. 1882
• 2007 South Country Club Drive–Home of Robert and Gladys Allen, ca. 1927
• 509 Thilly Avenue–The Lincoln and Edna Hyde Home, now owned by Scott Robinson andCindi King, ca. 1905

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