GLENDALE, Ohio — Glendale residents celebrated a big win on Tuesday after the Cincinnati Preservation Association announced it would buy the historic Glendale Eckstein School.

The unassuming school has sat empty on Washington Avenue in Glendale's historic district for years. Its long period of neglect belies the importance of the building in the community.

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Eckstein schoolhouse educated Black children in the neighborhood from 1915 to 1958 and stood as an enduring symbol of Glendale's history of segregation.

"I remember everyone in the community," said Denis Martin, who attended Eckstein Elementary School. "They grew up here, went to school here. And it was a lot of fun because this was a community of African-American people, and we were all like family."

Martin was one of the last students to attend the school before it closed.

She said stepping inside brings back a flood of memories.

It is also why it was so crucial for Martin and others in Glendale that the building itself be preserved.

In August, the school's current owner, architect Denny Dellinger, wanted to convert the schoolhouse into a convalescent home. He canceled that plan after a village council meeting where residents expressed their dismay.

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That led to Tuesday's announcement.

​"We heard the residents talk about how important it was, not just as a school, but as the center of community, life of the African-American community of Glendale," said Paul Muller, executive director of the Cincinnati Preservation Association.

The association said it plans to honor the building's history. Once its purchase is complete, the organization will transfer the lot to the Eckstein Cultural Arts Center.

"I think it's paramount that having this great local history to preserve it for the sake of education for this generation that's coming," said William Parrish, founder of the Eckstein Cultural Arts Center.

Parrish's father was one of the first students to attend Eckstein.

​"I know my grandparents and my dad, they're smiling today," Parrish said.

Carlos Reid, a Glendale resident who lives near the school, also said the purchase and planned transfer is a longtime win in the making for the community.

"To get up every morning and sit there and watch this structure and wonder what's going to happen to it," Reid said. "Now ... to know that now it's going to be preserved makes my heart warm."

Muller said it would likely cost millions of dollars to repair the school, and his organization will help the community raise that money.

"I think it, we all, you know, came together to preserve this school," Martin said.

GLENDALE, Ohio — Members of the Glendale community have reached a new level of frustration over the uncertain future of the beloved Eckstein School.

The owner of the building, once a segregated school for Black children, is appealing to the village government to turn the property into a convalescent home.

However, that effort hit a major snag this week when the council delayed a scheduled vote on whether to grant the owner a conditional use permit needed to move forward with the project.

The delay was a result of the uproar and various concerns voiced by residents attached to the building’s historical significance who shot down the proposal at a hearing on Monday night.

Denny Dellinger is the owner of the Eckstein School property and an architect based in Over-the-Rhine. He first presented Glendale officials with his idea to convert Eckstein into a convalescent home earlier this year. His previous efforts to repurpose and, most recently, sell the building were unsuccessful. As a result, he thought converting it into a convalescent home could be a viable solution to finally make use of the property.

“A lot of the rest of the village, I think, would support the project,” Dellinger said.

But his idea had been met with serious opposition at Monday night’s hearing.

“If you come up and down our street, we have signs that say, ‘Save Eckstein School,’” said Brenda Daniels, a Glendale resident who lives on the same street as the schoolhouse, Washington Avenue.

“This is a village that prides itself on being historic-minded,” said Libby Hamrick, another Glendale resident. “But I think what is clear now is that that means white history, not Black history.”

In addition to expressing their fury at the proposal to turn Eckstein into a convalescent home, residents also blamed the property’s arrested development on the Glendale government. They charged the village with letting the cherished, historic building come to this fate after years of contentious battles for ownership, as well as floated ideas to convert the space into a cultural arts center.

Bill Parrish is the executive director of the Eckstein Cultural Arts Center, a separate entity located on East Sharon Road. He once led his own unsuccessful fight to buy the property and has been trying to realize the idea of converting the schoolhouse into a cultural arts center for years.

He challenges the idea that Dellinger can do something productive with the space now after not having done so in his two years of ownership of the building.

“I think that this decision is a no-brainer," Parrish said. "There hasn't been anything that's really been presented that preserves that history.”

Village Administrator David Lumsden says it’s unknown when Glendale’s village council will vote on the issue. The item is on the agenda for the next meeting on Aug. 30.

Raymond Terrell, 86, attended Eckstein in the 1940s.

“My memories of being an Eckstein student are very precious,” he said.

Terrell said the Eckstein School wasn’t just a segregated schoolhouse. It was the center of Black cultural life in Glendale. He feels those who are in favor of turning the schoolhouse into a convalescent home are out of touch with the historical importance of the building.

“I think the major problem is that the new Glendale residents who are white and say they are concerned have no sense of the history that was there. And it was just, as far as they were concerned, it was just an old building. And they have no reality about what it was and...what it meant to the African American community.”

Dellinger doesn’t know what he will do with the property if he isn’t granted the permit for his convalescent home project. But even if he is, he’s concerned he still might not get very far with his plans.

“I don't feel very welcome in Glendale anymore,” Dellinger said.

Time will reveal if the schoolhouse continues to sit unused and dilapidated or become a symbol of progress and recognition of the village’s Black history.

Residents attached to Eckstein’s past as a haven for Black education and communal gatherings hope such an event will actualize calls for racial equity from last year’s nationwide social reckoning.

They say finding a way to appropriately commemorate and repurpose the building will be a welcome departure from how Black history has been slighted and overlooked in the past.

Monique John covers gentrification for WCPO 9. She is part of our Report For America donor-supported journalism program. Read more about RFA here.

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