The College Green is the center of Ohio University's Athens campus. With its brick walkways and shade trees, it has provided a quiet respite to Ohio University students for more than 200 years.

The College Green was originally forestlands and later devoted to farmland, used by the townspeople as a pasture. In 1843, OU's fourth president, William Holmes McGuffey, authorized the planting of 17 American elm trees. The elms became a staple of OU's scenery for 130 years of the college's history, until many succumbed to Dutch elm disease in the 1950s.