Old power plant razed: Revisiting Morgan’s history, legacy
The Antioch power plant partially demolished. Photo by Megan Bachman
By Megan Bachman
On Monday, Oct. 10, 2022, the century-old brick tower at the old Antioch College Power Plant was partly torn down by a demolition crew. The former steam plant, which has been defunct for more than 70 years, is being dismantled and the area converted back to its natural state as a spring-fed wetland within the Glen Helen Nature Preserve.
Though its iconic 125-foot smokestack is now largely reduced to rubble, the legacy of the power plant remains in Yellow Springs’ municipally-owned electric system. Credit for this goes to none other than Arthur Morgan, former Antioch College president and founder of the nonprofit that is now Agraria. For it was Morgan’s vision — and perseverance — that led to the creation of the power plant, which enabled the Village of Yellow Springs to turn away from Dayton Power & Light and towards its own power sources.
Today, Yellow Springs purchases power from a variety of local and outside sources, mostly hydro, solar and wind, for an electricity portfolio that is more than 80 percent renewable. It hopes to go even greener to buck climate change and improve the system’s resiliency.
Photos below by Thomas Keller
In the Yellow Springs News’ 2005 book, “Two Hundred Years of Yellow Springs,” Antioch College Archivist Scott Sanders detailed the saga of the building of the Antioch Power Plant. His article is reprinted with permission of the author and the News.
THE POWER PLANT THAT POWERED ANTIOCH AND YELLOW SPRINGS
By Scott Sanders
How Antioch College got its own central power plant may not seem the most interesting tale in the world, but it shows the industriousness and vision of Arthur Morgan, the Antioch president who in 1928 launched a building campaign that resulted in the college’s Science Building and power plant.
After a reorganization in 1921, Morgan’s Antioch grew steadily in almost all respects. This naturally led to an increasingly crowded campus that had virtually not changed since 1853. The more poorly equipped departments, namely the sciences, required immediate attention. Many agreed, especially two notables: Professor Clyde S. “Doc” Adams and Charles F. Kettering. Adams chaired the chemistry department and had a very personal interest in getting new science labs and classrooms. As vice president of General Motors, Kettering was the biggest of the big shots, and thanks to his friendship with Morgan, interested in Antioch as well.
Arthur Morgan in the early 1930s (Photo courtesy of Antiochiana, Antioch College)
The story, told several years ago by Adams, goes like this: He and physics instructor John Frayne drew up plans for a science building on Adam’s dining room table, then hid them behind the cash register in the old Antioch Tea Room. During lunch there with Morgan, Kettering and others, the topic of new buildings came up. “Boss Ket,” as he was known, asked what they had in mind, so Adams produced the hidden plans along with cost estimates, and the Science Building was born. Kettering agreed to fund the entire project.
As proposed the Science Building would be the largest on campus, and would require an immense furnace, one sure to take up valuable academic space. The construction of an outbuilding to provide heat became the best alternative. Adams found the most economical heating system generated electricity, and produced steam as a waste product. The wheels in Morgan’s mind whirred; why not centralize the entire college heating and electricity on a single power plant? In fact, he intended to power all of Yellow Springs through Antioch.
This was just the kind of exercise in self-reliance that Morgan lived for. Yellow Springs had drawn its electricity from Dayton Power & Light since 1920, an arrangement fraught with problems. Power lines from Dayton traversed heavily wooded country, and often came down in bad weather. DP&L customer service to the village had been less than desirable, and its contract expired in 1930.
The new power plant had to be finished by that time in order for Antioch to bid for the Village power contract.
Antioch located the structure in an old limestone quarry in Glen Helen just across Corry Street from the campus. To determine what machinery should be installed, the college placed a demand meter on the DP&L power line to gauge the village’s electrical usage. Antioch learned what Yellow Springs’ peak demand was, but an even more fascinating discovery was made: the power company had been overcharging the village for years.
DP&L’s dirty pool did not end there. Not wishing to lose such a lucrative contract, the company leaned on the principals involved in the power plant. The power company’s president informed Morgan that DP&L considered the college’s bid on the Yellow Springs contract “an unfriendly act.” The company obviously knew very little about Morgan, who could not be discouraged from anything he felt strongly about.
Evidence of DP&L’s tampering continued to mount. Delivery of control equipment supplied by General Electric experienced persistent delays. When Doc Adams questioned their sales rep, he found out that the power company, one of GE’s best customers, was pressuring GE not to supply Antioch with its power plant equipment.
When Tom Lloyd, an electrical engineering instructor and the plant’s first director, gave a lecture in Xenia about independent power supply, DP&L responded by paying another visit to Morgan. This time, the vice president flatly stated there would be no more of this power plant talk, and that Morgan and the college would be “embarrassed.”
Fortunately, Antioch had a big brother to turn to in Boss Kettering. Outraged, he called a meeting of all the involved parties a few days before the power contract bidding, sharply criticized DP&L for its unethical practices, and that was that. DP&L gave no more trouble to Antioch after this meeting, and even adopted a conciliatory position on the power plant, indicating rather dramatically the level of Kettering’s influence.
Thereafter the only delays resulted from mechanical problems, not the meddling of unscrupulous business types. Antioch won the Village power contract in December 1929 and began supplying electricity to Yellow Springs in February, an arrangement that lasted over 15 years.
The college’s equipment proved more than adequate until World War II, when power usage overtaxed its boiler, two steam and one diesel generator. The greatest strain likely came from the Antioch Foundry, a manufacturer of war material that ran day and night casting aircraft parts.
Antioch subsequently gave up its role as a power broker in 1947, and soon after stopped producing electricity altogether.
