Grandview Heights Moment in Time: Dec. 23, 2021
This beautiful 3,300-square-foot Arts and Crafts-style home was built in 1900 on a 95-by-191-foot lot in the Cambridge Place subdivision in Marble Cliff, according to the Franklin County Auditor’s Office.
The original address was 1242 Cambridge Place, but it was changed to 1430 Cambridge Blvd. when most Grandview Heights and Marble Cliff addresses were updated.
One of the first families to occupy the home was the Jackson family: William and Catherine (Murphy) Jackson and their four children. William Jackson was a Columbus real-estate agent when they purchased the house in 1917. His office (and home) was on Summit Street near Iuka Ravine. Records indicate that Jackson owned several properties in the Grandview area, as well as a filling station at 157 W. 5th Ave.
One conflicting record indicates that Jackson designed and built the home upon purchasing the lot in 1917, rather than the 1900 construction date shown in the auditor’s website.
In 1925, Jackson built a 1,000-square-foot detached garage with a mother-in-law suite over it to the east of the house, perhaps to provide a space for Catherine’s mother, Lydia, to live. The 1930 census indicates that she was in residence at the address.
During the Great Depression, Jackson faced financial hardship, and he took in boarders to make ends meet. In 1934, ownership of the home was transferred to Ohio State Savings, and by 1936, the home had been converted into four units. The Columbus city directory lists four families at this address, including the Jacksons.
By 1937, it is listed as vacant, and in late 1937, Catherine Jackson sold the home at a sheriff’s sale to the Homeowners Loan Corp. The HLC was a federal program developed from 1933 legislation intended to help homeowners struggling to maintain ownership.
In 1938, Herbert and Laura Toops moved into the house, and they bought it from HLC in 1942. They owned the home until 1986, raising their five children, all of whom attended Grandview schools, before selling it to Roger and Rebecca Alban. In 1946, Toops purchased the 95-by-191-foot property to the south in order to create a large garden and planted many fruit trees.
Toops was a prominent professor of psychology at Ohio State University, authoring more than 150 academic articles in his 42 years there. Toops obtained his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Ohio State and his doctorate from Columbia University in 1921. After several years working for the U.S. Army as a consultant to Secretary of War John W. Weeks and the U.S. Department of Labor, he returned to Ohio State in 1923 as a professor of psychology and became the head of the Statistical Laboratories at the university.
Toops became renowned for his work with standardized testing. He was the creator of the Ohio State Psychological Examination, which at one time was given to incoming freshmen at universities across the nation to test their aptitude for college. Toops also became involved in data processing as a result of his statistical analyses, and because of his work, IBM donated a huge computer to his department, which was Ohio State’s first computer. In 1975, the board of trustees named a prize after him for creativity in psychology.
A recent owner of the home was repairing some damage to a wall in the living room when he discovered there was a large staircase with newel post that had been covered up by the wall. The enclosing of the staircase most likely happened at the time the home was divided into apartments. According to one of the Toops’ sons, the family never knew the hidden staircase was there.