Hartwell Manor
| Hartwell Manor |
Nobody named Hartwell has lived in Hartwell Manor since 1911, and most of Briarmont still calls it the old Hartwell place. Elias Hartwell built the brick house on the rise above town, with its grounds and outbuildings, over land his own crews had cut bare. His will left it to the town, and for seven years it stood shut while his daughter, Adelaide Hartwell, argued with lawyers and Town Hall over what should become of it.
In 1918 the town's trust opened the Oakridge Institute of Forestry and Land Sciences in the house, and Adelaide handed over her father's books for its library. Field notes, boundary surveys and county records were soon coming into that library faster than anyone shelved them, and the Institute's survey crews left their notebooks there at the end of each season. That pile is the start of the college archive, kept in the house today. Adelaide's pressed plants are in it, labeled in her hand, and so is the earliest surviving time book from the camp, in Lyman Thayer's writing.
When the Institute was accredited as Oakridge College on July 1, 1947, the manor became the college's administration building. Applications to the college start in its admissions office, and anyone looking into a family, a boundary or an old survey line starts in the archive.
Out of character. New student characters begin at the admissions office here; Enrolling as a student has the steps.