COBURN HOUSE
Knapp Residence, Practice House, Mary B. Welch House, Gertrude Coburn Home Management House
Built: 1888
The house most recently called Coburn House was built by Herman Knapp in 1888 at a site on Knoll Road approximately at the west end of what is today Welch Hall. Neither the architect (if any) nor the contractor is known.
The Board of Trustees granted Knapp the privilege of building a residence and out-buildings on a one-acre site with a lease for ten years at an annual rental of one dollar, with provisions “that the buildings to be erected shall be satisfactory to the Building Committee and kept in repair and on failure to keep in repair the lease to be forfeited. It shall not be rented to any other person unless by permission of the Board of Trustees.”1
The October 1888 issue of The Aurora reported “the foundation for Prof. Knapp’s new residence may be seen rising abruptly from the hill north of Prof. Bennett’s house.” (Bennett’s house is today known as Pope Cottage.) The following April the paper recorded that the Knapps were occupying the house and: “It is very neatly and tastily built and adds greatly to the appearance of the college grounds.”
A water line to the house was authorized in 1896. In 1900 permission was granted to build an addition onto the house. The Knapps lived in the house until 1920 when it was sold to the College for $8000, two thirds of its estimated valuation.
In August of 1920 the house was remodeled for use as a Home Economics Division practice cottage. Five years later it was moved to an area north of the Physics Building, approximately at the west end of today’s Metallurgy Building. Also, in 1925 the name Mary B. Welch Home Management House was adopted, but in 1928 the name was changed to Gertrude Coburn Home Management House.
The Coburn House, along with the Bevier House, were moved again in 1947 when Metallurgy Building was about to be built. Moving and repairing of the two houses came to $24,085, paid from Atomic Energy Commission funds as part of the cost of the new building (Metallurgy).2
The house continued to serve the Home Management function until the fifties when new buildings for that use were built on Richardson Court.
Genetics research next occupied the house until 1967 when it was assigned to Psychology. It was condemned in the early seventies and razed in 1975.