Woodward High School (Cincinnati, Ohio)

Front of the old building

Woodward was one of the first public schools in the country.[5] The land for the original school was donated by William Woodward and his wife Abigail Cutter in 1826 to provide free education for poor children who could not afford private schooling.[6] The Woodward Free Grammar School opened on the site in 1831 and was the first free public school in the city. The original two-story school building was replaced in 1855. On the day after his election, President Elect William Howard Taft, who graduated from Woodward High School in 1874, laid the cornerstone of a third building, which opened to students in 1910 (39°6′38″N 84°30′36″W).[5][7]

The site is also linked to the Underground Railroad.[8] William Woodward built a home on the site in 1832, where Levi Coffin and his wife, Catharine, lived from 1856 to 1863. Coffin (known as "The President of the Underground Railroad"), sheltered over one hundred fugitive slaves each year on their way to freedom in Canada. The home was first occupied by Henry Rucher, an early principal and math teacher at the Woodward school, and it was commonly known as the Rucher House. It later served as the Good Samaritan Hospital (still in operation at its later Clifton Heights location). In 1865 it became St. Luke's Hospital, where disabled Civil War soldiers were treated. It was replaced by residential homes in 1874, which were demolished to clear ground for the new Woodward school building in 1907.[9]

The current five-story building has 150 rooms and 225,000 sq ft (20,900 m²) of space, a third of which is unusable (including the swimming pools on the top floor).[10]

The building is listed in the Over-the-Rhine (South) Local Historic District and the Over-the-Rhine National Register Historic District.[11]

In 1953 Woodward High School moved to a new location in Bond Hill at the corner of Reading Road and E. Seymour Avenue, designed to serve the postwar surge in population in the suburbs of Bond Hill, Golf Manor, Roselawn, Hartwell, and Carthage. The old downtown building was designated Abigail Cutter Junior High School until the School for Creative and Performing Arts took over the entire facility in 1977.[12]

In August 2006, the City of Cincinnati opened Woodward Career Technical High School, which features a mixture of college-preparatory and vocational education. With the new addition, the original campus was now called Woodward Traditional High School.