Frank Chamberlain Clark was born in 1872 in Greene, New York. He moved to Ashland in 1902 and was commissioned to design two buildings for what was known then as the Southern Oregon Normal School. Charles Chappell was so impressed with the young designer that he commissioned him to design his residence.

According to the Southern Oregon Historical Society, Chappell was a city council member and prominent Ashland citizen. He moved to the area in 1901 with his wife, Lucy, and their children. He owned several large tracts of land in and around Ashland. He died in 1905, the same year the house was finished. Lucy Chappell remarried three years later, and the family stayed in the house until 1919, when it was sold to Dr. Francis Gustavus Swedenburg and his wife, Olive.

Francis Swedenburg was born in Sweden and came with his parents to Wisconsin in 1872 when he was four years old. He received his medical training at Valparaiso University in Indiana and obtained his M.D. degree in 1900 from Rush Medical College of Chicago; He did post-graduate work in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York. Dr. Swedenburg returned to Wisconsin and practiced there for six years. He married Olive E. Eggleston in Red Wing, Minnesota, and the two left shortly for Ashland, arriving in 1907. Dr. and Mrs. Swedenburg had two daughters, Genevieve Marie and Marjorie Eleanor.

Dr. Swedenburg quickly established himself in town as a skilled physician. In 1910 he purchased a sizeable piece of property near the corner of Palm Avenue and Siskiyou and hired Frank C. Clark to design the Granite City Hospital. During the thirty years of residence in Ashland, Dr. Swedenburg acquired property in Jackson County, including two pear orchards, a commercial/apartment building, his medical offices, an interest in Blair Granite Company, and Reeder Reservoir, Ashland’s water supply control above Lithia Park. Dr. Swedenburg died in 1937 leaving his home and practice to his daughter, Genevieve. With the Swedenburg Family no longer in residence by 1965, the home faced an uncertain future. A year later the State Board of Higher Education had ordered the care of the Swedenburg house by Southern Oregon College.

The house served as an art center until 1969, when college officials considered destroying it. Students successfully petitioned the administration to keep the house. Eventually the barn and carriage house were replaced by the education and psychology building still in use today.

In 1982, the National Park Service placed the house on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1983, Southern Oregon State College received a federal grant to restore the house. Gilman and Blanche Plunkett led the campaign for the restoration project. A year later the house reopened as the Plunkett Center.

Today, the entire house is used by the university. The Plunkett Center contains the Office of Development, Alumni Relations, and the SOU Foundation.