herr2ck: Hold Your Horses

Ives Hall was located on the site of Knowlton Hall and served as studios for the School of Architecture for a time. Normally I condense predecessor buildings’ history into one article to save space, but since Knowlton’s will be so long, I decided to give Ives its own post. Ives Hall’s site is bordered by Woodruff Avenue and Pfahl Hall to the north, Ives Drive and the Northwest Garage to the south, Hitchcock Hall to the east, and Ohio Stadium’s parking lots to the west.

History

Historic photo of the Horse Barn and Implement Barn. (Knowlton Archives)

Ives Hall was originally designed as two separate buildings--the Horse Barn and Implement Barn. The former was designed by George S. Mills in 1907 and completed by January 1908. With a wood frame and brick exterior, this structure appears to be in the Renaissance Revival style. The Implement Barn was the westernmost of the two and was designed by university architect Joseph N. Bradford in 1911 to replace another on west campus that burnt down. Completed in 1912, it seems to have been in a similar style to its neighbor.

Addition to Ives Hall c. 1950s. (Knowlton Archives)

In 1924, Bradford designed an addition that connected the two buildings, which was a Neoclassical design. It was completed in April 1925 and dedicated on February 3, 1926, and the space was used by the Agricultural Engineering program. This brought Ives Hall to its exterior appearance for the remainder of its life.

As one can probably imagine, classrooms and labs in what used to be barn space were eventually outgrown. By the mid-1970s, modern farm equipment couldn’t fit inside Ives Hall, and the structure was aging. Agricultural Engineering eventually moved to a new building in 1986, and the space inside was renovated in the Postmodern style for studio/pin-up space use by the School of Architecture. Knowlton Hall was originally conceived as a major renovation and addition of Ives Hall, but much of the budget would be sunk into restoring Ives, and the School of Architecture’s administrators considered it a money pit that was not historically significant. (For the record, I agree.) Ives Hall was demolished in 2002.

Ives Hall was named after Frederick W. Ives, a professor killed in a railroad accident.

Postmodern Renovation Photos

Here are some bonus architectural photos of Ives Hall after the 1980s renovation that I found in the Knowlton Archives, which I don’t think are available anywhere else online.