Vacant school in Ohio

New Lyme Institute - Deming School, New Lyme Ohio

Date added: July 07, 2023 Categories: Ohio School

The institute was founded in 1878 under the name of Northern Ohio Collegiate and Business Institute. The land and $3,000 in matching funds toward the building were donated by Judge William S, Deming, New Lyme's most important citizen at the time. Aged 65, Judge Deming saw the possibility of an institute supplying the great need for preparatory education. The building was first opened in 1879.

The school was incorporated as the New Lyme Institute in 1883. The first president was Jacob Tuckerman, a native of Connecticut who had come to Ohio in 1836 studied at Kingsville Academy and at Oberlin, and served as superintendent of the Ashtabula County Schools and principal of Orwell Academy. During his administration the attendance reached 300 students, and the Institute flourished under his presidency, which lasted until 1897.

When the State Legislature was seeking a location in 1910 for the Ohio State Normal College which was finally located at Kent, the New Lyme Institute was one of the candidates. The Institute lasted until 1923, when the building became a public school and was called Deming School. It became a part of a consolidated school district in 1961.

Building Description

This is a two-story rectangular brick building with elements of the Victorian Italianate style, and two modern dependent wings. There is a square entrance bay projecting from the south facade, It stands to the west of the center, the second of five bays. There is a clearly marked vertical joint between the third and fourth bays, indicating that the building was expanded shortly after the original section was built in 1878-1879. The entrance tower has a short mansard roof and then a square stage. Above this was a belfry and a pyramidal roof which were removed in the early twentieth century. There was a similar belfry removed from the east end. The roof is hipped and covered with tin batten roofing, There is handsome ornamental iron cresting at the summit. The eaves have widely spaced wooden brackets. The windows have straight stone lintels and dropped architraves. The entrance bay second-story window has a segmental arch, The window pattern of the rear (north) elevation has been altered. Four of the windows have been made into fire exit doors, and one has been enlarged into a large continuous three-part window. The interior is largely unaltered, with high ceilings, original partitions, staircase, and woodwork. On the second floor, there is a large auditorium.

Linked to the original building on the west by a one-story corridor, there is a two-story brick wing with a hipped roof added in 1938. On the east there is a plain one-story brick wing added 1957. Neither of these has distinguishing architectural characteristics. They are basically utilitarian twentieth-century school buildings with plain rooms and corridors.

The building is located on the wooded bank of Lebanon Creek in an ideal wooded setting, which contributes greatly to the nineteenth-century feeling and association of the building, in spite of the alterations.