Columbus Dispatch published an article this morning about Ohio's historic Deaf School becoming an upscale apartment complex soon, as a part of urban renewal plans in downtown Columbus. The old Ohio Deaf School is long since empty but the architecture and its adjoining park are too beautiful to be torn down, so the developers decided to leave the whole architecture and the park as it is but will update the building with new additions, interior design improvements, and historic preservation efforts.

I'm very glad these people behind the plans for the old Ohio Deaf School are keeping and respecting its entire appearance and architecture in order to connect downtown Columbus' architecture past with the architecture future. The Ohio Deaf School was first opened in 1834, then it was renamed as Ohio State School for the Deaf in 1904. By 1953, the entire school moved to a new larger place off Morse Road in northern Columbus where it is still operating today. The entire OSD history can be read here.

Excerpt:

Randy Black, who leads the city’s historic-preservation office, said the Campus Apartments proposal rose to the top because of its consideration of the entire site.

"The key is that it respects a really important historic Downtown structure," he said. "It gets it back into reuse, respecting the exterior and interior spaces. It looked at all elevations as being important."

Adelman said his plan will cost $13 million to bring to fruition. It includes creating an entry court on the east side of the building that leads to the Topiary Park. The park, which contains a gardenlike interpretation of Georges Seurat’s painting A Sunday On The Island of La Grande Jatte, lies just to the east of the school and is the site of the original school building.

Adelman is working with Schooley Caldwell Associates, the Columbus architecture firm known for historic preservation. Schooley Caldwell partner Bob Loversedge said the school is an amalgamation of styles that can be described as Victorian.

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