Photos from October 2025 & January 2026.
Dominion Middle School, formerly North High School, is a stately Jacobethan Revival building designed by notable local architect Frank Packard. It was built as one of Columbus’s five directional high schools, but along with Central High School, it has since closed. The school remains in use as Dominion Middle School.
Dominion Middle School is located at 100 East Arcadia Avenue in the Old North Columbus neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. It is bordered by Glen Echo Creek to the north, Arcadia Avenue and houses to the south, Calumet Street and Glen Echo United Presbyterian to the east, and more houses to the west.
History
Circa 1880 photo of the Columbus Sewer Pipe Company. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)
Dominion Middle School was built on the site of the Columbus Sewer Pipe Company (later the American Sewer Pipe Company), which used the unique clay present in the Slate Run (now Glen Echo Creek) ravine to make high-quality ceramic sewer pipes. It opened on March 7, 1869. The business quickly accumulated four kilns and became a major local employer for Old North Columbus.
The former North High School in Victorian Village. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)
North High School itself originally opened in 1892, and it was located in Victorian Village at the time. It soon outgrew this space, and in accordance with the ongoing expansion efforts of the school district in the 1920s due to stricter attendance laws, it received a larger, more modern building. There was controversy about its location as early as 1917, since over 2,000 high school students lived between Hubbard Avenue in the Short North and Arcadia Avenue, where the present building stands. Ohio State offered to construct a building on its campus for education students to practice in as well, but they were turned down by the Board of Education, with one member stating “I don’t think high schools have anything to do with college. Let those who want their children to go to college pay the expense of sending them to special prep schools.” (In the end, the University School (now Ramseyer Hall) was built for K-12 students in 1932.)
The school district purchased the current site in 1921 for $35,000. It opened in tandem with the new Central High School on September 2, 1924. (East High School was built two years prior in 1922, South High School opened in March 1924, and West High School would not open until 1929.) According to Columbus Neighborhoods by Tom Betti, it was to be named Edward Orton Senior High School, but they had already decided on a name and mascot (Polaris and the Polar Bears) and thus the directional names were retained.
c. 1930 postcard of the building. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)
The new North High School was a Jacobethan Revival design by architect Frank Packard, completed at a cost of $1 million. His design was indicative of the then-modern attitudes of flexible interior use and new high school subjects. These included home economics, industrial arts, science, music, and art. Notable features of Packard’s plan for the school included a central auditorium and gymnasium, as well as an art gallery with a skylight and an art studio loft. This was one of Packard’s final designs, as he died in 1923, shortly after construction began.
Another historic photo of the school. (Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff Historical Society)
North High School was the largest high school in Columbus when it opened, and it retained this distinction until the 1940s. It had 1,900 students in 1950. North High’s sports teams were an athletic powerhouse, and it was the best college preparatory school at the time, as 95% of its graduates went to college afterwards.
Apparently, fraternities and sororities were present at North High School as well, where they held great influence over the students’ social network. These included the Link Club fraternity, Scioto Club sorority, and Waikiki sorority, all founded at the older North High School circa 1889, as well as the newer Arro Club sorority, Okay fraternity, and New York Club fraternity. Although some parents thought that they were good leadership opportunities and had high academic standards, they were ultimately banned by principal Edgar House in the 1950s due to their influence over the school’s other clubs. The state legislature eventually banned them statewide, despite appeals from parents lasting until their final loss in court in April 1962.
North High School’s dominance in the area gradually ended with the opening of newer high school buildings in the following decades and a demographic shift. It ultimately closed in 1979 due to declining enrollment and a Supreme Court ruling requiring the city of Columbus to bus white students to other schools in attempts to desegregate them. (North High School’s largely white population was distributed among other directional high schools.) As you can probably imagine, this resulted in a localized wave of white flight.
1987 photo of the school. (NRHP listing)
After North High School closed, the building was used as an adult education center for several years, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987 and the Columbus Register of Historic Properties in 2000. It was briefly used by East High School from 2006 to 2008 when their building was being renovated and expanded, as did Linden-McKinley High School from 2009 to 2011.
Beginning in 2012, the former high school building returned to use as a school, when Columbus North International High School moved in. After their departure in 2019, the building was renovated by Miles McClellan Construction, which replaced the roof, added new windows similar to the originals, and restored the exterior masonry. Dominion Middle School, the present tenant, was formerly located at an older school on Dominion Avenue that had a smaller student capacity. Dominion Middle opened inside the former North High School in 2021, delayed from 2020 by the COVID pandemic.
Photos
I originally took three photos of this school in October 2025, realized the building deserved better coverage than that, and came back in January for more detailed photos. Here is an oblique view of Dominion Middle from the southwest:
The building has three main modules--a slightly taller central area with two entrances, and two others at the end without windows. They are connected via slightly shorter classroom wings, which lack the decorative balustrades and finials on the parapet.
Not the greatest photo of the west facade, but I tried:
I usually try not to trespass on school property, especially if classes aren’t in session. It just looks a little suspicious to be standing next to a school with a giant camera.
I would imagine that the stairs are located at the corners, since they lack windows. The classrooms have groups of four double-hung windows.
Interestingly, the building uses Flemish bond brickwork, meaning that for every brick laid long-ways, the two next to it have the shorter end facing outward. It creates a sort of diamond or zigzag pattern on the facade:
Although much of the exterior is characterized by Packard’s restrained decorative touches, the central portion is packed with carved stone details, namely in the entrance portals and parapet:
The southwestern entrance, which is recessed ever so slightly but has a taller parapet with more stone details:
Its elaborately carved portal instructs students to “THINK CLEARLY”:
The goofy-looking creature on the doors is a polar bear, Dominion Middle’s mascot. They borrowed it from North High School, which was also the Polar Bears.
The window above also has some fancy Renaissance ornamentation:
The cornice has various decorative animal head reliefs, along with one of the school’s values (“KNOWLEDGE”):
I’ll skip the trite commentary about the quote this time:
Southeast entrance, with identical detailing but different quotes:
Not sure if this is a kind suggestion or a threat:
More lions and tigers and bears, oh my:
Not sure how true this is now, since Gen-Alpha plugs everything into ChatGPT and scrolls TikTok in class today:
The frieze is engraved with “NORTH HIGH SCHOOL”:
Another closer, better-framed view:
You can see a little cantilevered greenhouse on the east facade, which is pretty whimsical:
I didn’t want to trespass on the school’s grounds to get a photo of the football grandstand, so I got this one from the street instead:
The stands have been painted on this side, and the field seems more popular for soccer today than football:
It seems like there was once a grand stairway to enter the field from the corner of Calumet and Arcadia, which is presently gated off:
East facade of the school and the field from Calumet Street:
There is a smaller portion of the building to the north, which I believe is original and not a later addition:
I’m a little shocked that there wasn’t more history on this school building. The NRHP listing felt unusually brief, and there was little meat anywhere else.
Sources:
Columbus Neighborhoods by Tom Betti
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71988356
https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/postcard/id/33849/rec/21
https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/postcard/id/9847/rec/4
https://clintonvillehistory.com/north-high-school/
https://www.ghmchs.org/north-high-school
https://www.clintonvillespotlight.com/articles/north-high-nearly-ready-for-dominion/
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