herr2ck: Just Cause

December 2025.

Columbus Alternative High School in North Linden is one of the city’s lottery schools. Like the other school I covered in equally poor depth around this time, the Courtright School, CAHS is of the same vintage and also threatened with demolition.

Columbus Alternative High School is located at 2632 McGuffey Road in the North Linden neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. It is bordered by Minnesota Avenue to the north, houses to the south, Hamilton Avenue to the east, and McGuffey Road to the west.

History

Historic photo of the school. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)

Columbus Alternative High School was built as the McGuffey School, which was an elementary school. It was founded in 1924 after the school district bought 10 acres of land. Before the school building was completed, its first 77 students attended classes in portable buildings, which lacked electricity, gas, and water. Its existing building was completed in 1927 at a cost of over $200,000, a Beaux-Arts design by CCS architect Howard Dwight Smith. (My source claims the building is “Gothic style,” which is egregiously wrong.) When the McGuffey School opened, 770 students were registered at the school, and there were 22 classrooms.

In 1928, McGuffey School established the Special Class, which taught students with intellectual disabilities. To my knowledge, this was one of the first such programs in Columbus schools, as these children were typically institutionalized or sent to separate schools such as the Ohio Institution for Feeble-Minded Youth. Instead of a traditional classroom education, the curriculum at the time was more focused on handcrafts such as painting, weaving, embroidery, and metalwork, which was reportedly “encouraging to this type of child and gives [them] more confidence and a desire to advance in academic subjects.”

The school seems to have had several distinctions that separated it from other operating schools at the time. All students at the school apparently received “special emphasis” on their health and character growth. In warmer weather, the last 45 minutes of classes were blocked off for games on the school’s eight-acre playground, and the 5th and 6th graders plus the Special Class had an hour-long gym class in the mornings. 85 of the school’s students received free lunch, provided by the WPA and donated by local organizations. McGuffey’s PTA was the largest in the entire school district and established a study group for the students, along with donating playground equipment and establishing the first elementary school library in the entire city.

McGuffey School (top right) in late 1951. The oval-shaped suburban development is the Linden Park Homes subdivision. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)

As of 1950, the school’s principal was G. R. Frank, and there were 24 teachers. Its phone number was LA-0611. At that time, the school building had 21 classrooms, a kindergarten room, a combined gymnasium and auditorium, and two office rooms. The first alteration to the building occurred in 1952, when a matching addition to the northeast side was built directly onto the 1927 school. By 1955, another directory states that McGuffey School had 33 teachers, 25 classrooms, three kindergarten rooms, and five portable classrooms.

A rendering of the 1962 addition. Very curious--the new buildings are rendered as featureless volumes, and it is framed to de-emphasize the original. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)

As North Linden expanded with suburban development in the 1950s and 1960s, McGuffey School’s enrollment continued to increase, and another major addition (ostensibly the eastern ones that form a courtyard) was built from 1961 to 1962 by Brubaker & Brandt at a cost of $1 million. Upon completion, it was the largest school addition project in the school district’s history. Its principal was Paul Lindquist, who started his term in 1956, and under his purview the school became “one of the finest Elementary Schools in Columbus.” [sic] After the additions were completed, McGuffey School began to serve as a K-8 school, with a new capacity of over 600 students in 37 classrooms.

Columbus Alternative High School (CAHS, pronounced “cause”) was established by Columbus City Schools in 1978 as a magnet high school. It was originally housed in Mohawk Elementary School downtown before moving to the McGuffey School shortly afterwards. The school is a college-prep high school that offers unique opportunities such as AP and IB classes, humanities programs, and internships with local employers.

In 1988, the playground space south of the school was paved over for a staff parking lot. A 1991-1992 directory shows that CAHS and McGuffey Elementary School coexisted in the same building, with CAHS using the majority of the classrooms and faculty. Despite CAHS’ success, it is nonetheless planned for closure by CCS. If this were to occur, it would be consolidated into East High School or Downtown High School.

Photos

I also don’t have many photos of this one, either. I took these photos when I planned to do a few “school dump” articles, like my other posts along a single street, instead of individual posts for each school like I have now. I don’t think the architecture is super distinctive, but I wished I had taken more advantage of my time there.

The school is two stories tall and largely brick, aside from a stone cornice and two pedimented entrances. It also has a cupola on the roof for ventilation.