First Location of Griffith House, the First President’s Home
A house that was associated with both Presidents and International Students in the history of Southwestern and was moved around a lot.
Griffith House (also referred to as ‘the White House’) was the first president’s home on campus. The building was bought by Southwestern after the Ladies Annex fire in 1925. At the time, President Barcus and Mrs. Barcus were living on the first floor of Snyder Hall, an on-campus house serving as a women’s dorm. However, they moved out to accommodate the relocation of the women who lived in the Annex.
The Griffith House was named after its original owner, Claude Stevens Griffith of the C.S. Griffith Lumber Company, who was responsible for building many of the early establishments in Georgetown. Claude and Nancy Griffith built the house int he early 1920s. The couple had a prominent relationship with the University, hosting a variety of events for the students and faculty in their home starting around 1909. They had three children, who all graduated from Southwestern.
After selling Griffith House to the University in 1925, Griffith continued to live in Georgetown, while maintaining his connection to the University. In the early 1940s he became mayor of Georgetown, staying in that position until 1949. Around the same time, he bought a new house located at 1204 Olive Street. Housing census documents from the 1940s and 1950s state that the Griffith family’s house on Olive became the unofficial Kappa Sigma fraternity house while the Kappa Sigma house on-campus was undergoing renovations.
