Town Happenings
Chapman University nestles into the community it calls home, helping to foster an academic village
Photography Scott Stedman
It is an old and simple house, by Orange County standards – a 1924, three-bedroom bungalow of just over 1,000 square feet, its only hint of pretension being the arrangement of cut-stone around the fireplace, positioned to show off a scattering of fossils embedded in the rock. But there is grace in the way the light pours through the wide windows, the afternoon shade cools the front porch and the wood floors glow like warm honey.
For Professor Vernon Smith, Ph.D., a Nobel laureate in economic science, and his wife, Candace, it is home.
“I grew up in a house that had a lot of similarities,” says Smith, relaxing on the sofa in the living room of his Old Towne Orange residence. “I love it here. I feel really at home here.”
Plenty of other folks share that sentiment. Since its grid of tidy streets was first planned out in 1870, the area at the center of the City of Orange has always been a vibrant community for every strata of society.
When the one-square mile area that includes the Orange campus of Chapman University was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, that charm fledged into a cherished community character.
The four-block business district around the historic Plaza Park has changed with the times, too. Called “a hotbed of retro-with-a-twist businesses” by the Orange County Register, the district is now home to boutiques, award-winning restaurants, brew pubs and a Saturday farmer’s market.
Many Chapman faculty and staff also call Old Towne home. When residential properties adjacent to the university’s perimeter come onto the market, Chapman sometimes purchases them and rents them to faculty and staff. To date, the University owns 94 homes in the historic district, 59 of which are officially designated historic structures. Dozens of professors, administrators and staff members now live just steps from campus.
Chapman’s goal is to help foster an intellectual village. In so doing, the university preserves vintage homes while infusing Old Towne with newcomers whose connection to the community aligns with that of longtime residents, says Kris Eric Olsen, vice president of Campus Planning & Operations.
Olsen, who oversees the University’s restoration of historic homes and the refurbishing of non-historic buildings, says the academic village is a tradition at many universities. In Orange, Olsen says, Chapman is helping to build a community akin to Caltech’s faculty neighborhoods, where classic California Craftsman homes “are a complement to the university.”
History is honored in the process, too. The Olsens live about a block from campus in a 1919 home originally built as a Mennonite church.
A look into the misty history of the Smiths’ craftsman-style home reveals a wide array of past residents, including a garden club doyenne, a World War II air-raid captain, a fertilizer salesman and law school students.
That’s all interesting to Vernon Smith, one of the world’s leading economists. But his first thoughts on the house are that it’s the only one he’s lived in that doesn’t have room for a home office, and he’s found that he enjoys the short walk to his campus office, as well as the separation of work and home.
“It’s my home now,” he says.