2015 Adams St. Built 1915 Madison Landmark National Register Craftsman Style
Residence of English Professor & Poet
William Ellery Leonard from 1906 to 1944.
A poet acclaimed worldwide, translator of classics, and a man confined to his own “phobic prison”
caused by being scared by a locomotive as a child. For most of his life on campus he could not
travel more than a few hundred yards from his home.
In his last years he conducted all lectures from his home.
Married four times including; a student 30 years younger, and two marriages to the same woman.
He married Charlotte Freeman, the daughter of his landlord, in 1909. The marriage was short
lived, however; she committed suicide on May 4, 1911.
In his psychological autobiography,
The Locomotive God (1927) he probed his agoraphobia.
