A Family Home
A History of the President's Mansion at Auburn University
University of Alabama Press
This entertaining and very human record is a wonderful addition to the story of growth of a relatively small and fairly isolated school to an internationally known and respected university whose alumni now put their educations to good use world-wide. Yet wherever they are found, the Auburn family has a claim to think of the President’s Home as their home too. This is its story.
Of course, the story of the development, occupancy, and use of the Home is also the story of the growth and progress of a premier institution of higher education. The Home has been just that, a home that has seen children and grandchildren running up and down stairs and in and out of doors, and also a setting for both informal and formal entertaining and celebrating, a gathering place for the families of the individuals who have served the institution as President, and for the larger family that is the Auburn community.
Richardson has searched the Auburn records, and set out to contact as many members of the families who have lived in the home as possible, from the Luther Duncan family that took up residence in 1939 to her own Richardsons, the 17th family to call the Home . . . home. From such reminiscences as well as more formal records, a gracefully written history of Auburn University of the last seven decades also comes clearly into view.
Nell Richardson, Auburn’s first lady during the presidency of her husband Dr. Ed Richardson, has written a graceful and affectionate history of Auburn University’s President’s Home from its construction as a WPA project on “Ag Hill” in 1938 to her own tenure as the University’s first lady from early 2004 until the summer of 2007.
