March 2026.
Buckeye Village was an affordable housing complex intended for older students and families at Ohio State. It has since been demolished and partially replaced with athletic buildings. This will be an unusual one, because it was an Ohio State-affiliated building but not located on campus.
Buckeye Village was located in the Olentangy West neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. It was bordered by Ackerman Road to the north, roughly the location of Irving Schottenstein Drive (formerly Hess Road) to the south, Olentangy River Road to the east, and Fred Taylor Drive to the west.
I guess this article will be my last Ohio State-related one. I hadn’t planned to cover Buckeye Village at first, but I later reconsidered, since it was ultimately pretty close to where I lived. Time to fire up the John Herrick Archives one last time.
Veterans Emergency Housing History
Annotated map of the Veterans Emergency Housing site. Defiance Drive is in the same position, but the other buildings were placed differently. (John Herrick Archives)
Buckeye Village’s history can be traced to the “Veterans Emergency Housing” built by the university after World War II for veterans returning to college. It was likely where the Buckeye Village name stemmed from, as along with that, other nicknames for the project included “G.I. Village”, “The Village”, and “River Road Dorms.” The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill) was passed in 1944 and helped returning veterans afford housing, education, and medical expenses. The stipend allowed in the bill resulted in many returning to college, but many veterans did not want to choose between finishing their education or returning home to start a family. This led to demand for housing other than the gender-specific dormitories for unmarried students on campus at the time.
Veterans Emergency Housing consisted of 75 buildings--eight one-story and 18 two-story barracks for single students, 47 two-story barracks for married students, a cafeteria, and a power plant (an existing farm building converted for this use). The barracks buildings that were used as housing were wood-frame buildings from various military bases deconstructed and rebuilt on campus. They were organized around ten streets named after Ohio counties--Clermont Court, Gallia Court, Hancock Court, Hardin Court, Holmes Court, Huron Court, Knox Court, Lorain Court, Putnam Court, and Trumbull Court.
Aerial view of the site in 1947. (University Photoarchives)
All of the buildings on-site were built by a federal government agency, though university architect Howard Dwight Smith prepared the plot plans, and the university installed the utilities and roads. Work was done in three sections--first ten dormitories and the cafeteria/power plant, then 16 more barrack dorms, and the third section completed the remaining buildings. The site plan for the first phase was approved in March 1946, and construction began that May. Parts two and three were approved shortly afterwards and began construction that year, and the buildings opened intermittently between 1947 and 1948. In all, the Veterans Emergency Housing project cost $400,000. Some of the single student housing was used for other purposes, such as research offices, storage, and the university architect’s construction office.
The first 152 veterans and their families moved into Veterans Emergency Housing in 1947. These families would not have been able to live together prior to its completion. At that time, rent varied from $25-43/mo, and each unit was fully furnished and included an icebox. However, an early battle in the project’s history was a letter from the resident council protesting a 21% rent increase in 1957. The university dismissed this, citing increased operation costs and assistance with future dormitory construction, and the students then mailed Ohio senators. “We maintain that we should not be compelled to provide for the housing of unmarried students when our own flimsy and inadequate dwellings are in far greater need for rehabilitation and replacement…[a] University policy that demands forced donations while neglecting the needs of the donors is practically and morally unsound.”
Veterans Emergency Housing closed after the end of the 1959 school year, and the demolition of the buildings was approved shortly after. They were razed intermittently between 1959 and 1965.
Buckeye Village History
Contrary to popular belief, Buckeye Village was never officially named by the Board of Trustees, and John Herrick labels it “Married Student Housing.” It consisted of 33 buildings of different sizes and apartment capacity, and two of those buildings were the laundry building and service building. The project was designed by Tully & Hobbs in the Mid-Century Modern style. They have a brick veneer on the exterior with bearing cinder-block walls, concrete floor slabs, cinder-block walls between apartment units, and within each apartment the partition walls are conventional wood framing.
A family in Buckeye Village. (University Archives)
The project was designed in two phases, both with 200 units. The first had its plans approved in October 1958, and construction began in 1959. The buildings were halfway completed by fall 1960 and were fully completed and occupied by winter 1961. The second phase had construction begin in July 1960, and those buildings were completed at different times between August and December 1961. In total, the project cost a little over $4 million.
Like the Veterans Emergency Housing, Buckeye Village was also laid out on streets named after counties in Ohio--Ashtabula Court, Cuyahoga Court, Defiance Drive, Lorain Court, Mahoning Court, Montgomery Court, Muskingum Court, Stark Court, Trumbull Court, and Tuscarawas Court. Of these, only Trumbull Court and Tuscarawas Court exist to some capacity, while Defiance Drive remains the main thoroughfare of the area.
Historic photo of apartments in Buckeye Village. (University Archives)
Buckeye Village was extremely popular with students. A 1971 Lantern article cited a 12-15 month wait for an apartment, and the waiting list consisted of some 800 families. Although the veteran requirement was dropped in the mid-1950s, residents had to either be married, have children, or both. A daycare for Buckeye Village was built on Fred Taylor Drive in 1972.
Interior of a Buckeye Village apartment in 1993. (University Archives)
By 1986, another Lantern article cited the problems that would soon become apparent with Buckeye Village’s future closure--that off-campus housing is more expensive, difficult for single parents to live in, and about half of the available apartments did not allow children. A law professor and the Single Parents on Campus organization’s faculty advisor, Nancy Erickson, even recommended the construction of additional housing in Buckeye Village. At that time, 80% of the residents were married international students, while the remainder were married students or single parents.
The only other new development that occurred at Buckeye Village over its lifetime besides the earlier daycare was the construction of a new community center. It opened in January 2005 and was designed by The Collaborative (possibly Acock Associates before their merger with the aforementioned firm). It includes a daycare, community center, and meeting space. The principal designer was Kay Bea Jones, then a professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture.
Plans to demolish Buckeye Village began in the early 2010s. A 2010 campus master plan stipulated graduate/professional housing near Lane and High, along with land between 10th and 11th Avenue. It also set aside land north of Ackerman Road for potential family housing. In 2013, the Athletics District Framework Plan Update stated that the university would consolidate the athletic district, which would result in relocation of Buckeye Village. However, the 2017 Framework 2.0 plan seems to have done away with family housing. This appears to be the case for the current university master plan as well, Framework 3.0.
Toys outside of several Buckeye Village apartments. (WOSU)
Ohio State closed applications to live in Buckeye Village in 2016 (aside from an informal process in 2019, accepting a “very limited number” of new applicants), and its demolition began in 2017 with 13 apartment buildings being replaced by the Covelli Center (not completed until 2019). They decided to expand the athletic complex northward to “consolidate athletic complexes and student-athlete services and create a community among student-athletes.” It was originally scheduled to fully close on May 15, 2021, but the date was pushed a year later due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The remaining families were not consolidated and rather left behind in increasingly empty buildings, resulting in cases such as a doctoral student having an entire 12-unit building only occupied by himself, his wife, and his child. This also resulted in issues such as squatting and break-ins. The residents were offered apartments at University Village for two years for the same rent as Buckeye Village, but utilities became more expensive with the move.
Frustratingly, a 2017 proposal for affordable family housing on campus also fell through. It would have been built on an empty lot at the northeast corner of Kenny Road and Woody Hayes Drive, which would have had 450 new units at a rate 25% below market. Its location was based on feedback from Buckeye Village residents. However, the university planned to use a private developer, which would have then had to pay property taxes on the site. This would have resulted in increased construction costs and therefore rents. Despite Senate Bill 120’s elimination of these taxes in 2020, the university still cited “[unknown] overall construction and management costs” as reason not to move forward that year.
Proposed reuse of Buckeye Village land (top). (Columbus Underground)
Buckeye Village was completely demolished by the end of 2022, and although the land was supposed to be reused with new athletic fields, it remains vacant as of 2026. Despite university claims to “investigate long-term solutions that support graduate student and family housing that is affordable,” there is currently no designated housing for graduate students and students with families, and rent is much more expensive in Columbus than Buckeye Village’s subsidized rates. In 2018, the average rent for an apartment in Buckeye Village was $535/mo, while off-campus it was $675/mo. I’m sure that this number has increased due to the insane rise of the cost of living lately. Additionally, most off-campus apartments that are one- or two-bedroom are not suitable for families of three or more. With Ohio’s political climate, it seems more than just a coincidence that the closure of Buckeye Village is disproportionately affecting poor and minority students.
Photos
I started at the north end of Buckeye Village, at Ackerman and Defiance, and proceeded southward from there. The site has been swept completely clean:
The demolition process left some telltale remnants behind, which allowed me to piece together the site plan a bit better. This curb and drive formerly led to Cuyahoga Court, but now all that can be seen is the 1972 daycare center:
This concrete pad on the east side of the street has a few bricks still lining it. I assumed that it used to be a bus stop, but it does not appear on Google Maps and apparently was demolished prior to 2015.
Hard to believe that this remaining sidewalk, now leading nowhere, once brought you to the central courtyard of an apartment building:
It’s always surreal to be in areas like these that were demolished at a large scale, as remnants are always left behind. My trip to Wonderland near the airport had similar “ghost streets” and sidewalks that likewise led to houses torn down 40 years ago.
These two turnoffs were for Mahoning Court and Stark Court:
It’s kind of fitting that the university picked certain street names here, such as Mahoning (Youngstown) and Montgomery (Dayton). When these apartments were built, those cities were humming industrial powerhouses fired by the might of the American middle class. After outsourcing gutted American industry and thrust those once-great cities into the ash heap of history, so too has the greed and prejudice of Ohio State deprived underprivileged students of an education they would otherwise be unable to afford. I am sure we will be reaping the benefits of those twisted seeds in the next generation or so.
Ohio State has consistently shown who they prioritize in their decisions regarding campus and University District development, and that is white, upper-class students. The same can be said for our presidential administration. America used to be a place that drew in foreign students for their (often graduate or professional) education, but they are now leaving in droves due to the insane, bigoted anti-immigration laws passed by our government. This is an effect known as “brain drain.” Of course, this is nothing new, given the current waves of anti-intellectualism globally.
Seems like I’ve reached the community center:
It’s nothing super interesting aesthetically, although the dematerialized facade and odd fenestration indicates it has some architect-stipulated sauce versus a more boring and functional building.
This nearby lacrosse field was another recipient of former Buckeye Village land:
A densely populated boon for graduate students, reduced to nothingness.
It’s even more frustrating, considering that the site of that giant 5-over-1 across Ackerman with two-bedroom rents starting at $2,000/mo was supposed to have a replacement for Buckeye Village. (Yes, I looked it up.)
This stub of pavement is still used for parking and is the largest remnant of any other street in the area. It was formerly Tuscarawas Court.
Here is the only remaining original building from the 1960s Buckeye Village--the housing office:
It has a number of original features still remaining, such as the aluminum windows. Nowadays, it is mostly used for storage and parking.
This stretch of Defiance Drive used to extend southwards towards where the Covelli Center is now, to Tuscarawas Court, Trumbull Court, and Ashtabula Court:
After that, it hooked eastward and ran where Irving Schottenstein Drive does now, providing access to Lorain Court and Muskingum Court.
I then took Fred Taylor Drive to the child care center, which is surrounded by a tall berm:
I didn’t want to linger and look like some creep taking pictures of a daycare, though.
I’m unsure what the future of Buckeye Village’s site will hold, but it sure as hell won’t be for grad student apartments. Very shameful how seemingly innocuous decisions such as this one have broad implications for underprivileged students.
Sources:
https://kb.osu.edu/items/529a2461-dfe9-5095-babe-72817e8dcd40
https://kb.osu.edu/items/e4bfc237-4134-574d-b98e-6084208862bb
https://pare.osu.edu/framework
https://placesjournal.org/assets/legacy/pdfs/buckeye-village-community-center.pdf
https://tc.design/projects/buckeye-village
https://columbusunderground.com/remaining-buckeye-village-buildings-to-be-demolished-soon-bw1/
https://kb.osu.edu/items/17cf4b0a-d9e2-53da-8bb2-036c5ff67f45