The Ohio State University
Photography & Cinema Alumni Society

Haskett Hall • 156 W. Nineteenth Ave.

by Brent LaLonde

reprinted by permission from the March/April 2004 issue of Ohio State Alumni Magazine.

Frank H. Haskett spent 31 years on Ohio State’s faculty, 20 of them as an instructor in architecture before he became a professor of photography in 1927. Two years later he was promoted to chair of the photography department, but he relinquished the position in 1934 because of poor health. He died in 1938 at age 62.

Thirty years after Haskett’s death, the Engineering Experiment Station on West Nineteenth Avenue was renamed Haskett Hall.

Harold A. Bolz, dean of the College of Engineering at the time, proposed naming the building in Haskett’s honor because the university’s photography department was housed there.

But unlike many professors and department heads whose names grace buildings around campus, Haskett surely was honored primarily for what he did outside the classroom.

For years, Haskett was the official university photographer. He took countless pictures of university scenes and life that were widely published in the student yearbooks and campus publications.

An obituary noted Haskett’s ability to make each picture “tell a story.”

Born in Ontario, Haskett came to Columbus in 1900 to attend Ohio State. After two years he left to do secretarial work for YMCAs in Cleveland, Marion, and Columbus. He returned to the university in 1907 when he was made an architecture instructor at age 31.

Frank H. Haskett

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