OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
Harvard School
6900 Harvard Ave.
Cleveland, OH
The former Harvard School (now apartments) is located at 6900 Harvard Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Built in 1903, it was listed with the National Register of Historic Places on May 22, 2002. The Harvard School is in a working-class neighborhood of Cleveland known today as Slavic Village. Located nearly five miles southeast of downtown Cleveland’s Public Square, the neighborhood around the school became home to many immigrants of Slavic background who arrived in Cleveland from eastern and southern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Today the Harvard School is surrounded by modest working-class houses dating primarily from the early 20th century. Harvard Avenue, which is a busy east-west corridor, passes the north side of the school, and East 71st Street, an active north-south commercial street, passes to the east. The building is surrounded by flat lawn and playground areas; an industrial building is located close to the school’s east end on Polonia Avenue. The area has a strong, dense urban working-class character, and the Harvard School was built to educate the many children living here in the early 20th century.
The development of modern school design in Cleveland began when Frank S. Barnum became architect and superintendent of buildings for the Cleveland Public Schools in 1895, a post he would hold until 1915. The Harvard School was the work of Barnum, with a later addition by Charles W. Hopkinson. The school is located at 6900 Harvard Avenue in a working-class neighborhood close to the east edge of the heavily industrialized Cuyahoga River Valley. The Harvard School was built in three sections between 1903 and 1927, reflecting the rapid growth of its surrounding neighborhood in the period between the turn of the 20th century and the start of the Great Depression.
Though it has some elements of the Jacobethan Revival style, such as an arched entrance opening with an ornamental panel surmounting it, as well as clustered windows with transoms, the building has a very spare and simple design. The rectangular 1908 addition, which was placed south of the original school, is of a more ornamental design. The 1927 addition projects from the east wall of the 1908 addition. This portion of the building is very simple in design, though it has a few elements of the Jacobethan Revival style that link it to the earlier structures, such as door and window surrounds and a stone panel near the southeast corner with the incised legend “Harvard School.” The walls of the 1927 addition and its gymnasium extension are topped by simple stone copings similar to those on the 1903 and 1908 structures. A single-story infill in the ell formed by the 1908 and 1927 additions is of indeterminate date but has elements similar to those in the 1927 addition.
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