John and Margaret Hussey

In December 1904, John Edwards Hussey purchased lot numbers 505 and 506 in Gladdington Heights, a subdivision laid out by J.R. Tilton just before the turn of the century, for a grand total of $550. With the land, he built an Arts and Crafts-style home between 1905 and 1906. Later in life, he claimed that it was the first house built on Wyandotte Road, with the 1909 city directory placing the family on the “west side Wyandotte, third house north of 1st Avenue.” 

Hussey was born in 1864, moving to Columbus with his family in 1881. At the age of 17, he enrolled at The Ohio State University to study art, but with no fine arts department available, he transferred to the then-newly created Columbus Art School (now the Columbus College of Art and Design). Though he graduated in 1885, he remained at the school for over 25 more years, teaching drawing and design, serving as director, and as a curator for the eventual Columbus Museum of Art. 

Margaret (left) and John Hussey, pictured together.

1889 saw Hussey marry Margaret Bowen, with whom he had two children, Donald and Eleanor. Upon his retirement from the Art School, John and Margaret moved to Linworth, where he developed extensive gardens and an orchard on 10 acres of land. The family appears to have retained the house in Grandview Heights, which was later home to Eleanor’s family in the late 1940s. 

In 1920, Wendell Paddock, then-Dean of OSU's College of Agriculture, called Hussey out of retirement and named him “Assistant in Horticulture.” Hussey would go on to work for the university for 26 years, retiring in 1946 as OSU's oldest staff member. In that tenure, Hussey beautified the campus, designing gardens, supervising the planting of trees and shrubs, and developing the university's own nursery so it would not have to buy plants elsewhere. He is also credited with fashioning the first model of Ohio Stadium to carry out the ideas of its building committee before the stadium opened in 1922. 

John and Margaret Hussey on Catalina Island, CA, having been married 68 years.

In addition to his career pursuits, Hussey helped found First Community Church, serving as its first Sunday School superintendent. A lifelong watercolorist, he wintered in Hawaii and on Catalina Island for plein air painting, and a 1946 show of 60 of his watercolors hung at the Southern Hotel. John and Margaret’s 68-year-long marriage concluded with Margaret’s death in 1958 at the age of 87. John later passed away in 1969 after a long, full life at the age of 105. 

Current photo of Hussey's former home at 1367 Wyandotte Rd.