Austin Eldon Knowlton

Austin Eldon Knowlton was trained as an architect but spent most of his career in the construction industry. His company designed, financed and built more than 160 college and university buildings on every major college campus in Ohio and more than 200 elementary and secondary school buildings. His companies have also constructed more than 35 major hospitals and 43 United States Post Offices throughout the country. In his lifetime, he designed more than 600 buildings. A. E. Knowlton was born in Athens, Ohio in 1909, the second child of Clarence Luster Knowlton and Vertura Mae Cundiff. His father had founded Knowlton Brothers Construction in 1906 with his brother Everett and had been in the construction business in Athens, Ohio. About 1917, they were awarded the contract to build the Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine, Ohio and both brothers relocated to Bellefontaine and made it their home. The brothers separated their business about 1923, at which time "CL" formed his new company, C. L. Knowlton and Sons, Contractors, with sons Clarence Ernest and Austin Eldon. Eldon Knowlton grew up in Bellefontine, played football in high school and gained the nickname "Dutch."