The Original Port Columbus Airport Control Tower was built in 1920 by Allied Architects Association, a consortium of architects best known for their work to create a classical civic center after the 1913 flood. The octagonal control tower and two-story building marked the transfer point of New York passengers by railroad to the Transcontinental Air Transport Ford Tri-Motors to Waynoka, Oklahoma where they boarded another overnight train in New Mexico for a TAT flight to Los Angeles. The entire coast-to-coast trip took only 48 hours, and the inauguration of air service in Columbus was marked on July 8, 1929, with the appearance of noted aviators Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, and Henry Ford. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker arrived the next day. The survival of such an early air facility is extraordinarily rare. The building is owned by the Columbus Regional Airport Authority and is unused.

Winner of the First Annual James B. Recchie Design Award and an award from the Architects Society of Ohio, the former plating and silvering plant was located on Naghten Street, an area now on Nationwide Boulevard. Vaudvillities used the building for rehearsal, stage and set construction until 1979 before attempts to turn it into a retail center failed. It was purchased by Continental Development and Trott & Bean Architects, Inc. as a joint venture and renovated and restored for private office space and conference facilities. The building is threatened with demolition for the development of a new hotel on the site.

Indianola Junior High School was the first school in the United States that was built specifically to be used as a junior high school. The present school was constructed in 1929. The junior high idea was developed by superintendent of schools Jacob Shawan and OSU president Dr. William Oxley Thompson. The school was designed by Howard Dwight Smith, who would achieve recognition as the architect of the Ohio Stadium. Built to model a high school, Indianola boasted industrial arts and home economics classrooms, a model apartment for decorating by students, a wood paneled library with working fireplace, and outside terra cotta tiles and stone carvings of bison and woodland animals and a relief of Chief Logan (Tah-ga-jute) done by Dr. Frey (OSU arts faculty and creator of Dr. Thompson’s statue in front of the Main Library). The school is built on the former Indianola Amusement Park. It is listed on both the City of Columbus Historic Register and the National Register.  As of 2025, it is the home of Metro High School (now The Metro Schools), a school started by then-OSU President Karen Holbrook.

Original Endangerment Description
Back in 2015, the building was noted as being “vacant, mothballed and deteriorating” and was listed on our Most Endangered Sites listing for the year; it now has a second lease on life serving the University District as a high school. 

Built in 1884, this building was one of 4 masonry structures that withstood the 1913 flood in Franklinton. The structure has operated as a grocery, shoemaker’s shop, hardware store, bar, grill, etc. The building has been empty for several years, but is located in an area poised for redevelopment.

The Holy Rosary High School building, opened in 1928, was used until well into the 1960s when the Holy Rosary Parish was merged to help form the Community of Holy Rosary and St. John the Evangelist. The school was built in the Northern Italianate style and was designed to complement the nearby Holy Rosary Church. Both incorporate distinctive clay tile insets into the exterior décor of the brick buildings. Other structures on the site include an elementary school and a convent. The high school is boarded up and shows some signs of deterioration.

Bellows Avenue Elementary, built in 1905, opened at Sandusky Street and Bellows Avenue in 1905 with 13 rooms at a cost of $45,200 (the site cost $5,735) for 350 students and 11 teachers. Named for its location at Bellows Avenue, the school and street were named for George Bellows, Senior, the architect and father of George Bellows, the artist who was known for his urban realism as an Ash Can School artist. The school served students on the west side of the Scioto River who lived in the area from Town Street to Greenlawn Avenue. It is scheduled for demolition in 2023.

Elam Drake Farm is named for Elam Drake, a mason and brick maker who moved to Columbus in 1831. He built some of Columbus’ earliest brick buildings and many others through the 1850s. Much of his work is on the National Register of Historic Places. Mr. Drake built a house, smoke house, and threshing barn on his farm when he retired. The buildings are in excellent structural condition but not currently in use. The buildings are owned by the Columbus Regional Airport Authority which is currently planning major redevelopment of the airport facility.

The Franklin Park Medical Center, designed by local Architect Harold Scofield, features architectural elements inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. An important part of the City’s heritage, the building is included in Columbus Landmarks Foundation’s recent African-American Landmarks Preservation Initiative Report. The Medical Center was opened by five African-American physicians and served primarily African-American clientele at a time when medical services were still largely segregated. The building is currently unoccupied and has sustained significant water damage. Interested community residents are working to save the building.