Abandoned school in Kentucky
Eleventh District School, Covington Kentucky
The former 11th District School building is one of the chief landmarks of the small (population about 2,000) community of West Covington, an area annexed by the city of Covington in 1916. Set near the top of a ridge surrounded by the hills of Northern Kentucky to the south and by the Ohio River Valley to the north, the building, a restrained Tudor Revival design typical of the post-World War I era, is highly visible from many directions. It was built in 1920-22 to extend the benefits of the traditionally excellent Covington public school system to the newly annexed community, which is geographically somewhat separate from the 19th-century city, located around a bend of the hills in the adjacent Licking River Valley. The 11th District School was designed by the prolific and highly competent Columbus, Ohio, architectural firm of Richards, McCarty & Bulford, who also were responsible for the design of many important buildings in central Kentucky. A compatible 1931 addition was designed by northern Kentucky architect Chester H. Disque. In the vicinity of several other community institutions, the school building remains a visual landmark, although it was reluctantly, closed because of Federal student busing requirements in 1979. A group of local investors is currently (1983) considering renovation and adaptive re-use of the structure for apartments, utilizing the Tax Incentives available under the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981.
West Covington was originally known as "Economy." It was established about 1846 on the estate of Israel Ludlow, a prominent early Cincinnati and northern Kentucky land-owner and developer. The town was incorporated in 1858 as West Covington. The population grew from 554 in 1860 to 993 in 1870 according to Collins. As early as the mid-1870s there was a movement to annex it to the city of Covington, whose population continued to expand after the Civil War. Annexation was not accomplished, however, until 1916, during a period when a number of adjacent areas to the south and west of the 19th-century city were also annexed.
It appears that the West Covington area was part of the large tract bought in 1828 by Israel Ludlow from William Bullock. Bullock was an Englishman who had bought the land from Thomas Carneal in 1826 and laid out the town of Hygiea, one of the most famous and admirably designed of the "paper towns" of the West. The heart of Hygeia was to have been Carneal's fine residence, known as "Elmwood Hall," which still stands in the modern town of Ludlow.
Israel Ludlow began to plat the town of Ludlow, but died before it was completed. The 30 acres set aside by the estate for payment of debt proved not sufficient, "so the executors platted the town of West Covington in 1846, on a tract belonging to the estate, and sold sufficient lots to settle the unpaid balance. Thus West Covington happened to enter the sisterhood of towns along the Kentucky bank of the Ohio River," as the 1893 newspaper history of Ludlow puts it. No structures are shown in the area on the Civil War map of Northern Kentucky, however, The 1883 atlas provides a good deal of information about the fledgling community. The site of the 11th District School Building seems to have been just laid out as a subdivision flanking Hanna (now Altamont)Street; a building, perhaps the Hanna residence, is still shown directly on the site of the bend in the street (Main Street had not at that time been continued north by the overpass above Route 8).
According to Gastright, West Covington was settled to a large extent by persons of Irish descent. St. Ann's Roman Catholic Parish, the dominant institution of the community, was one of the few English-speaking Roman Catholic parishes in the northern Kentucky area before World War I. The history of the church, school, and related facilities is to a considerable extent the history of the community. Originally established about 1860 on the south side of Route 8, the St. Ann's complex was moved to new facilities nearly opposite the 11th District School, on the east side of Hillcrest Street (or Parkway Avenue), in 1931-32, just as the addition was being made to the public school. (St. Ann's School has also recently closed.) There were complaints in the newspaper at the turn of the century that "the present schoolhouse is totally inadequate; the children are crowded into the rooms like sheep". There was no high school available except through payment of a fee in Covington or Ludlow. West Covington had its own public school on or near the site of the present building, as well perhaps as a private school located nearby at the intersection. Soon after the annexation, however, the Covington School Board began considering financing of a new school in West Covington, along with the Holmes High School in the newly-annexed southern part of the city. On January 3, 1918, $250,000 in bonds were approved for the 11th District and Second District Schools and the High School. The cornerstone of the 11th District School was laid with the inscription, "Take fast hold of instruction for it is thy life. A.D. 1922." The building was dedicated on September 3. A short notice on August 3 (Kentucky Post, p. 1) includes a photograph of the front of the new building. This is valuable as a record of the degree of intactness of the existing building: aside from the addition, the only change seems to have been in the windows. These were originally fairly small-paned steel-framed panes with some groups of six panes able to pivot horizontally. Actually, the original architects' drawings show small-paned wood-framed sash windows, apparently never installed.
The pivoting windows were not, however, a success. The minutes of the School Board (August 29, 1931) state that "A much needed improvement at the 11th District School is being accomplished by this Board. A four-room addition is being built and a completely new heating system is being installed. Factory windows in the old part are being replaced by a new type of window which adds much to the lighting efficiency and exterior beauty of the building." Later it was noted that Chester Disque, architect, reported that rapid progress is being made on the addition being built to the 11th District School in West Covington. The addition was no doubt made in response to somewhat of a population boom that was causing the expansion of the inner suburbs of northern Kentucky before the effects of the Depression fully hit.
After many years service, not only as an educational institution, but also as a community center, the 11th District School was reluctantly closed by the School Board after the 1978-79 school session in acquiescence to Federal requirements for the busing of students which led to the consolidation of small schools. Aside from the general issue of busing, the strong attachment of West Covington residents to the 11th District School and its building are evidenced in the deliberations of the board as recorded in newspaper articles at the time of the closing.
A group of investors, including architects, planners, investors, and others desiring experience in rehabilitation utilizing the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and other Federal and local incentives, have undertaken to purchase and renovate the school building, along with its six-acre site, as a medium-price apartment complex. The attractive exterior will be stabilized and preserved basically as it is, while the undistinguished interior will be remodeled to provide approximately 26 units.
Building Description
The 11th District School is set on the west edge of a ridge that runs approximately north-south from the Ohio River to the higher hills on the Kentucky side. The ground falls quite steeply off to the south, to an artificially flattened shelf of land formerly used as a playing field for the school. The opposite side of the valley to the west and the surrounding area of the ridge flanking and east of the school is a largely residential area of middle-income housing. Route 8 (Highway Avenue) meanders westward between the Ohio River and the hills through several communities from Covington proper, in the Licking River Valley, through West Covington to Ludlow and then Bromley, all in Kenton County. The school can be approached by means of secondary streets from several directions, and is located just off a junction that marks one of the community's centers. Here are concentrated a late Victorian neighborhood store, a Colonial Revival firehouse, the St. Ann's R. C. Church and, its former school building, among, a variety of late 19th and early 20th-century dwellings. The school building itself is set back some 100 feet from Parkview with a paved parking lot between the sidewalk and front of the building. Several large trees remain near the facade. The basement, only partly exposed on the entrance front, is fully revealed on the western downhill side, which is also surrounded by pavement.
The building is a fairly long rectangle, with a small rectangular projection at the east side of the south end. The original structure consisted of four classrooms on each story, flanked by entrance pavilions at both ends. An additional set of classrooms, as well as a library and auditorium, were provided in 1931, with a third entrance pavilion at the south end. The front and rear classroom windows consist of strips of five windows each; now steel-framed casements with three large lights on each casement) the windows originally had fifteen smaller lights and pivoting sections of six lights in each window unit, although the drawings showed small-paned sash. There are also windows at the ends of the corridors on the north and south and an additional window on the south side of the library tower in the addition. The entrance pavilions have large Tudor-inspired entrance doorways at ground level with shallow pointed arches and the name of the school embossed on tile plaques within stepped molded frames over the slightly recessed doors. There are trefoils in relief on the spandrels of the arches, and cusped finials above the plaques. Slightly larger windows above the entrances (on the stair landings) are set lower than the other second-story openings; these have tile Tudor labels and patterned quoins. The otherwise flat brick parapets on all sides rise into steps with raised corners over the entrance pavilions. Thin courses of white tile form a watertable above the basement and outline the base of the parapet and the continuous sill-course of the entrance pavilions only; all the other openings have minimal and unconnected sills, and upright brick courses instead of jackarches. A square brick chimney rises between the two original sets of classroom windows at the rear.
The basic structure of the building is reinforced concrete, poured in place, with ribbed concrete floor and roof slabs. The exterior walls are face brick with tile backup and plaster interior surfaces. The exterior walls are bearing walls, while the interior support is column-and-beam construction. Interior partitions are plastered tile.
The interior seems to have had absolutely minimal trim, although the library and auditorium in the addition had some modest corbels under the beams. The library also had rather handsome wainscotting, but this has been destroyed by the effects of water damage, which has also, along with vandalism before the openings were sealed up, caused a good deal of interior deterioration.
An article in the Northern Kentucky Tribune has some additional history about the school.
(1983)
(1983)
(1983)
(1983)
(1983)
(1983)
