Mount Auburn Elementary School

History of Mount Auburn Elementary School

Mt. Auburn School was an elementary school on the southeast side of Cleveland that was built alongside Audubon Junior High School in 1922. Both schools were constructed in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, only a mere block from each other, and were built by Walter Roy McCornack, a notable Cleveland architect of the school district who designed many schools from 1914 to 1925. Mt. Auburn was built in a special way, a reminder of a disaster that occurred 14 years earlier. In 1908, the Collinwood School fire in Collinwood, Ohio, resulted in 172 deaths. This made McCornack prioritize fire safety in the construction of modern schools of the day. Mt. Auburn was built as a " fireproof fortress " with steel framing, reinforced concrete floors, iron railings, and the addition of two staircases to avoid choke points in case of a fire. Along with being "fireproof" the design of Mt. Auburn also allowed natural light to flow in. Before the era of lights in classrooms as we see today, many schools favored large windows, with designs allowing every classroom to have a large series of windows, often over 20% of the walls in a classroom. The mere 2-acre plot of land the district allocated for the school presented a challenge for McCornack, as many parts of the school were stacked directly on top of each other, with the gymnasium located in the basement. In the end, the school would measure 45,306 square feet, relatively small for a three story school of the time. Not much is known about Mt. Auburn during its operational years, however, it likely served as a neighborhood school, with enrollment declining until it was closed in 2006. For nearly 20 years now, Mt. Auburn has remained abandoned, while many similar schools have been repurposed into apartments in the Cleveland area. Mt Auburn is slated for demolition, however, this proposal has stalled, and a fight between preservation and demolition is underway. The school's interior is in very poor shape, both staircases have decayed to a point where access to the second floor poses a serious hazard to traverse. Alongside this, scrappers have stolen most items of value from the school, with nature doing the rest. While the neighborhood has been significantly cleaned up since the late 2000s, with the demolition of many abandoned houses, Mt. Auburn still remains, however, it is unlikely it will last even five years given the level of decay the school has suffered.