Putting It Together
Turning a Collection of Mismatched Buildings into One Cohesive High School
When you think of an addition to an existing school, what comes to mind might be a new auditorium or larger dining area. But when SHP Leading Design (SHP) designed an addition to Tecumseh High School, they weren’t simply expanding one space. Instead, they were expanding and combining two separate buildings—as well as uniting several different eras of architecture.
—Tecumseh School Board member Beverly Quinn
The New Carlisle, Ohio, school was first built in the 1930s. In 40 years of operation, renovations and additions didn’t always match the style of the existing classic architecture. By 2005, the high school, home to 1,200 students, was comprised of two separate buildings, forcing students to walk outside between classes.
Jeff Parker, SHP architect and project manager of the Tecumseh Schools project, explains, “If students had class on the second floor in one wing and had to get to the second floor of the other wing, they had to go downstairs, around the library, back up the stairs and back up the hall.
“The existing buildings [made up an] hourglass shape, coming to a pinch-point in the middle,” Parker says. “We had to plug in the new buildings at a very specific location.”
The high school’s technology was also overdue for an upgrade.
“Some of the buildings were built in the ’30s, and even though they were kept in good shape, they didn’t lend themselves to the technology that we need in today’s world,” says Mike Lucas, Tecumseh Local Schools business manager.
Finding Solutions
Making those connections was one challenge. Another was making the project work with funds from the Ohio School Facilities Commission (OSFC).
“We were unable to get state funding for a new auditorium and gym at the size and scale that were needed,” Parker says. “So that was the challenge: renovating the gym and auditorium, and building a new school that included academic wings, a dining room, a media center and new vocational spaces, all while the rest of the campus stayed operational.”
—Jeff Parker
All in all, a daunting assignment. But according to longtime Tecumseh School Board member Beverly Quinn, SHP was more than up to the task. “There was an issue of how do you build on two existing, fairly large pieces, and make it all work?” she says. “SHP was marvelous. They immediately saw how we could do it.”
That’s not to say the final solutions were immediate. The project followed SHP’s careful process of community input.
“The first step was to determine where to put the addition,” Parker says. “We created half a dozen iterations of where the addition could go and how it needed to work.” A series of meetings with community and school board members, staff and students helped narrow down the choices.
“Our school district has several small communities in it,” Quinn says. “SHP met with each community. If people said, ‘No, we don’t like that,’ they [SHP] would come back with something else. They continued until people were happy.”
Bridging the Gaps
To help figure out the best way to connect existing buildings, Parker says, “We actually handed out survey forms to people to have them fill out questions and offer comments on what they thought the solution could be.”
“We left the auditorium and gymnasium in place, and built around and behind them,” says Quinn. “It worked very well.”
Says Parker, “We came up with a glass-enclosed bridge across the top of the library that would connect the two second floors. So not only can you look out over the courtyard outside, but you can also look out over the media center.
“It’s an exciting space,” he continues. “It’s all glass, so it allows a lot of natural daylight into the library. It adds character. The constraints that we were placed under drove the solution and really made for some exciting outcomes.”
And at least one spirited debate. When SHP proposed new construction that would match the façade of the existing gym and auditorium—one that Quinn characterizes as “this kind of crazy yellowish brick”—suffice it to say, it did not go over well.
“We were nearly run out of the building,” laughs Parker. “They didn’t like that at all. We went back to the drawing board and came up with a solution that would enable us to put a permanent stain on the buff-colored brick, making it look like more traditional red brick.”
“SHP worked very diligently and got the staining correct for us,” Quinn says. “They assured us that it would work, and it is beautiful.”
Making History
In other areas, rather than incorporating history, SHP worked to recreate it. Tecumseh High School’s existing baseball field, named for former longtime coach and Ohio High School Baseball Hall of Famer Bob Davis, had been revered for generations. Unfortunately, it was also the only place where a new middle school could be built for the district.
“Typically, for a high school, you grade the land, put up a fence and call it a baseball field,” Parker says. “But they had spent a lot of community time, energy and dollars getting the existing field as it was. If there was one thing we’d be judged on, it was the baseball field. So we enlisted consultants that specialize in this [creating ball fields]. We built a baseball field that’s fully irrigated, fully drained, has a natural turf outfield and infield, backstops, dugouts and bullpens.”
“The field has been a wonderful addition to our athletic complex,” says Lucas. “It is a state-of-the-art baseball facility equal to most college fields.”
According to Quinn, administrators are also quite pleased with the new wedge-shaped dining area. Parker says, “The neat thing about it is the traffic flow moves around the perimeter of the cafeteria, and there is seating in the middle of the triangle.”
The library, also wedge-shaped, is now connected to the cafeteria through a central rotunda. “If you stand there, you can see nearly all the entries into the building, which is pretty powerful,” Parker says. “It also makes the building really easy to find your way through. All roads lead to Rome, and all roads lead to this rotunda.”
“I’ve been in the district 28 years, so I really have a pretty good feel of the history of this campus,” Lucas says. “I really like the way we kept our gymnasium and auditorium, and I think SHP did an outstanding job of tying in the renovation and making the building like it was supposed to look.
“I know our students are very excited about it,” he continues. “Everybody is still kind of in awe of what’s taken place.”