Stoughton Cottage
After the College settled into its new home on Grymes Hill in 1918, the first buildings added to the campus were two cottages for faculty housing. Constructed around 1922, one was torn down in 1960 to make way for the Horrmann Library; but the other still stands, and today contains the public safety and human resources offices.
The cottages were designed in the popular Craftsman style, similar to the President’s House (called Kairos House today), built in 1917–18 in advance of the College’s move, as well as the Stapleton home of early College leader Pastor Frederic Sutter, class of 1894.
The surviving faculty cottage was built for Professor Clarence C. Stoughton, a high school history teacher and devoted churchman who came to Wagner Memorial Lutheran College from suburban Rochester in 1919. He served as the principal of our high school program from 1923 to 1927 before joining a real estate firm on Staten Island for several years. He returned to the College in 1932 as registrar, and the following year was named acting dean.
In 1935, Stoughton was elected president of Wagner College, the first layman named to that position. He was beloved by the student body, who dedicated the first Kallista of his presidency “to ‘Prof’ Stoughton … as a testimony of our appreciation.”
Stoughton’s experience at Wagner made him a firm believer in liberal arts colleges. In his inaugural address he declared, “While we do not need more universities, we do need more small liberal arts colleges, where personality remains sacred, where the student is always an individual, where individuality is developed and emphasized.”
Stoughton, who left Wagner in 1945 to serve in the stewardship office of the United Lutheran Church in America, later became president of Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. He died on August 31, 1975. — Lee Manchester
