John L. Plyler Home

Front inscription

This house was the boyhood home and birthplace of John L. Plyler (1894-1966), a Furman University alumnus and Harvard Law School graduate who served as an attorney, judge, and dean of the Furman University Law School before becoming the seventh president of Furman University in 1939. Plyler was Furman’s longest serving president, remaining in that post until his retirement in 1964.

Reverse inscription

During Plyler’s tenure as president he supported the first written campus statement on academic freedom, aligning Furman with the Statement on the Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure of 1940. Plyler also oversaw the development of a new university campus north of Greenville, where classes began in 1958, and the physical unification of Furman University and the Greenville Woman’s College on that new campus several years later.