web exclusive: Explore the Ridges
Explore The Ridges
Any Athens resident knows the road to the Ridges is paved with ghost stories, tales of mysterious stains on the floors and inexplicable sounds emanating from behind locked doors. Sneaking through those winding hallways under the cover of darkness is an OU rite of passage. But it’s a different place by daylight, and the Ridges has more to offer than run-ins with the supernatural.
Lin Hall, which houses the Kennedy Museum, is one of the buildings at the Ridges the university has renovated and reopened.
The Kennedy Museum of Art at the very heart of the Ridges, was the asylum’s central building. In the 1990s, it was reopened by the university as a museum, and now offers visitors a place to view artwork surrounded by intricate architecture. The majestic main hall, with its gray and burgundy mosaic floor, branches into several exhibition rooms which currently feature a variety of pieces from precise etchings to African totems to silkscreens of an electric chair by Andy Warhol. It’s pervasively quiet inside, which is unnerving at first, but adds to the pristine, escapist atmosphere of the museum.
The graceful main hallway of the Kennedy Museum at the Ridges.
These pieces, displayed with the intent to showcase a variety of styles, are part of the Kennedy Museum's permanent collection.
This poem wedding dress, "Clothe My Naked Body" by Lesley Dill is on display in the Kennedy Museum now.
One of the exhibits in the Kennedy Museum now highlights the history of the Ridges, and features old photographs of the asylum.
A little beyond the Ridges is the Dairy Barn, a 10,000-square foot arts center literally housed in a long white barn with quaint slate shingles. The Dairy Barn offers classes, a holiday bazaar and a gift shop in addition to its huge exhibition space, which currently features Southeast Asian puppets, adorned with vibrant fabric swatches and used for storytelling.
The Dairy Barn, just beyond the ridges, offers art exhibits and events, including quilt and bead exhibitions.
The base of this stairwell, and the start of a nature trail, can be found outside the Dairy Barn.
After a day of digesting art, the Putt People First mini-golf course in Southside Park, just adjacent to the Ridges, offers a place to unwind. The course sat in disrepair until May of this year, when two local nonprofits (HAVAR, which works with developmentally disabled individuals, and the Athens Area Mediation Service) decided to revamp it, and local businesses like the Athens News, Donkey Coffee and O’Betty’s have sponsored holes. Now the course, with its tee-shaped light fixtures adorned with colorful ties, is back in business, with funny obstacles to tackle, like a cement ear, a detailed log cabin and a massive coffee mug. It reopens May 3 for the season, and there are leagues forming for the fall.
The Putt People First course, located in Southside Park, just opened in May and features 18 holes for players to putt the day away.
All of this is set against the backdrop of Ohio’s hills, and its spot at the top of a crest gives the Ridges a breathtaking view of campus. When it was built, the asylum was purposely situated amidst beautiful grounds, thought to promote the patients’ health. Today, nature trails run along the cemeteries and through the surrounding woods, lined with pine needles and cones. Row after row of chalky headstones, many of them nameless, rise up eerily from the grass, and the place carries a quiet acceptance of the past.
The view from outside Lin Hall showcases the beauty of OU's campus.
It’s starling to imagine the Ridges filled with the hubbub of doctors and patients, instead of sculptures and putt-putt holes, and the strange marriage of past and present makes an adventure to the Ridges a little unnerving — and fascinating. The weight of this place presses itself upon you, but you leave knowing that it’s like none other, a most fitting setting for the adventures of an Athenophile.