Vacant schoolhouse in Cleveland OH

East Cleveland District 9 School - Superior School, Cleveland Heights Ohio

Date added: July 21, 2023 Categories:

Ohio
School

View of east corner of building looking west (1973)

The school was built as the District 9 school of East Cleveland Township in 1882. It was the third school building on the site, replacing an earlier brick building. The minutes of the Board of Education in 1853 stated that a still older building was "an Old House of little value. Must be rebuilt." The frame second story of the existing building was added in 1915. Cleveland Heights became an independent municipality in 1901. The Superior School was used for regular classes until 1925. It stood vacant for years, then in the late 1940s and 1950s it was used for classes for slow-learning children. At present it is used as a storage building by the City of Cleveland Heights.

Because the first portion of the building was unusually solid in construction; the addition shows the adaptation of the building to the increasing needs of the community; and the survival of the building in a large metropolitan area is unusual.

There are perhaps a half dozen 19th-century schools in the Cleveland metropolitan area whose integrity has been altered by conversion to residential or other uses. There are five schools of some integrity in the area older than the Superior School. Two are one-room brick schoolhouses; the other three are large public city schools in the Italianate, Victorian Gothic, and Queen Anne styles (one will probably be demolished by the Board of Education; one is now a parochial school; one is the Sterling School).

The Superior School is the only schoolhouse in Cuyahoga County constructed of sandstone, and there is only one other in all of northeastern Ohio. This stone construction makes the building "unusually solid," compared to brick or wood frame construction. (The other is Florence Township School, an octagon. )

The architectural configuration of the school (stone ground story, wood second story) is unique in all of northern Ohio, and probably in the state. It is precisely because it does not fit the traditional stereotyped image of a "little red schoolhouse," and because it is an unusual variant of vernacular building, that the architecture is significant. The second story of frame construction was added for functional reasons in a style that harmonizes but does not try to duplicate the earlier structure.

The school is educationally significant not only because it was a local district school, but because it was adapted in its declining years for special purpose education for slow learners.

The survival of the school is significant because the country school remained on a city lot while an entire upper middle-class residential neighborhood grew up around it. The survival is not credited to the substantial construction, but to the fact that it was used continuously until 1925 and then adapted for use again in the 1940s and 1950s; and today to the fact that it is recognized locally as one of the community's few links with the 19^th century (the community of Cleveland Heights).

Building Description

This is a small two-story schoolhouse building of sandstone and wooden frame construction. The narrow front of the building faces southwest on Superior Road. The lower story is constructed of sandstone ashlar masonry. The windows are rectangular with sandstone sills and lintels. The entrance steps are slabs of sandstone. The second story of frame construction was added thirty-three years later than the first story. Its exterior sheathing is narrow wooden lap siding. On the roof is a small square belfry with a pyramidal roof. The original roof was slate, but new roofing was put on in 1976. To the rear of the building is a small (15 feet by 15 feet) room of the same stone construction as the lower story. The interior consists of one large room on each floor. The walls and ceilings are plastered. The woodwork is very plainly finished. The building is being used for storage by the City of Cleveland Heights. The windows are boarded up.