#29614

In 2016, WutBJU reported on the conditions of campus buildings. That was seven years ago!

You could see what BJU was ignoring for maintenance back then. By comparing the buildings scheduled to be razed to the ones not-yet-on-the-list you could see BJU's facilities priorities. How are things now?

BJU has razed houses. And that's recently -- since Pettit has left.

Long ago they razed my little house at 14 Seminar and the houses on either side at 12 and 16 Seminar. There's a large RV parked there now. Very large.

The Mulfinger's house is gone. All the houses around it are gone.

Now, I don't know when those were razed. I do know that these houses came with the campus and/or were moved to that property -- that BJU did NOT own -- early on. Here's a listing of them from the phone book in 1962:

Through at least the 1960s, those houses were listed as residing on Springdale not Seminar.

Except for what is now 11 Seminar, they are all gone.

But again, I don't know when this happened. Somebody out there reading knows, if they'd like to fill us in.

What I do know is that one house is gone -- the house immediately next door to Bob Jones III's manse. Here's how Google Maps collected the brick house back in December 2018:

But sometime after May 2023, 409 Library Drive disappeared.

When I was on campus on Monday (12/4/2023), you could see nothing but the grass seed poking up above the straw.

So what about BJU's main campus? That's Map #0281000100100.

And there's so much conversation around how BJU got this property. But two names are never mentioned: Jesse Alexander White and William Smith Bradley.

Both were business men in the Upstate. White was from J. P. Stevens, a Clemson grad and an ARP member. He was the original owner in the public records. He sold it to Bradley in November, 1945.

Bradley was a real estate developer and the man who started Shriners Hospital in Greenville.

Above is the BJU campus as the Greenville City aerial photo captured it in 2021. The red pin is Rodeheaver.

If you poke around that site, slide toward the 1955 picture.

South Drive is that curved road that goes from what was the cleaners, in front the Academy and behind Rodeheaver.

The campus ended there in 1955. That was it. From there to Wade Hampton was BJU. Here's a city map from 1960:

That green was the whole campus in 1960.

BJU bought the soccer field and developed up to Stadium View. But they didn't own from Stadium View to East North until 1998. Remember that. They built scores of houses and developed land and collected rent on property that wasn't theirs for decades.

This in the red was not theirs:

Given that those houses back campus are older than the campus....

Given that several of them have been razed, one since May....

Given that BJU started in Greenville with a little less than half of the property they have now....

Given that they are cozy with residential developers....

I'm betting that they want to sell off that back portion to a developer and shrink their tax bill and responsibilities.

That little driveway there off of East North street in 1955 has always intrigued me.

It's a big house. And I lived right near that spot from 1992-1996. Who was there? What's their story?

Victor Daniel Gifford was the son of a horse farmer and a horse farmer himself. That spot there (what is now Profs Place and Tassel Trail on BJU's back campus) was Victor's farm. He called it Oakledge Farms.

He judged horse shows and participated in them. He boarded horses and bred them. The horse that the Greenville News talked about the most was named "Genius."

He and his wife Lucy had one daughter, Angeline Rita Gifford, who spent at least one year up at Wheaton.

Victor's wife, Lucy Wright Gifford, had been an invalid for 14 years after a hip fracture when she died at 81 years old in 1965. She was just a few months older than Bob Jones, Sr., btw. Yet officially he officiated her funeral with her pastor, Walt Handford (John R. Rice's son-in-law).

Bob Sr.'s inclusion had to be a mere formality because, according to faculty stories, he was pretty infirmed by this point.

Yet...

Right after Lucy died with Bob Sr., BJU put Mr. Gifford on the Co-operating Board of Trustees.

There's only one reason that happens: control.

And usually financial control.

Mr. Gifford was 82yo himself at this point.

When he died, his daughter Rita inherited that property. But get this.

Rita Gifford didn't sell that property to BJU until November 6, 1998! She lived out in Simpsonville at this time.

So from at least 1970 to 1998, BJU just leased this land.

They built on it. They charged rent for houses on it. They put barbed wire around it.

In June 11, 2009 in Kerrville, Texas, Ellen Connelly remembered an old story about Bob Jones Sr:

My roommate had an aunt who lived in a beautiful southern mansion adjacent to the property where Bob Jones University was being built in the late 1940s. Bob Jones Sr. called on her one day and told her he had something to tell her that she probably wouldn’t believe. He said he’d had a dream in which God told him to cal on her and to ask her to donate her house to be the president’s home at this new university. The lady assured him that she wasn’t the least surprised at this request and that she did indeed believe him. “You see,” she said, “I believe you because I also had a dream in which God told me that you would be asking me to do this. He told me to tell you no.”