SCHOOL INFORMATION

 

Mount Healthy Elementary

12150 State Road 58

Columbus, IN

 

Our Hours of Operations

About Our Building

Mt. Healthy Elementary is one of our “country schools”. Although located along Indiana State Road 58 between Ogilville and Waymansville, it is a route seldom traveled by anyone but the residents of this southwestern area of Bartholomew County. espite its obscure location it’s a very interesting building designed by Hardy Holzman Pfieffer Associates (HHPA) and is one of the far flung outposts on our “official” architectural driving tour. Mt. Healthy School took its name from a former school in the area which in turn was named for an early settlement which no longer survives as a town.

HHPA designed the school which opened 1972 as a symbolic return to the idea of the old one-room schoolhouse where all the students of different levels would be learning in the same open space. It ushered in an era of open-concept school buildings in Columbus meant to be flexible and conducive to new ideas in learning. The lack of walls and traditional classrooms ultimately became too distracting and many schools reverted to more traditional methods of teaching. Our local school system, the Bartholomew Consolidated School System (BCSC), has never been afraid to tackle new innovations and techniques in teaching as well as building concepts. They have also been flexible enough to change directions when the new ideas didn’t quit fit with our community. That innovation continues with several local schools now configured as “Signature Academies” and “New Tech Schools.”

For its time period, the building was a very cutting-edge design with its open-concept plan enhanced by the exposed and brightly colored mechanical, structural and electrical elements. The support girders are orange, heating ducts are green, and the exposed plumbing pipes are yellow. Its offset pattern of roof and wall glazing (windows) assure that no two clusters have exactly the same enclosure. The intermediate cluster was the only area with large expanses of glass, two stories high with skylight-like projections and many small panes.

The building was officially dedicated on Nov 19th, 1972. At the dedication, architect Hugh Hardy said, “The building was planned to reflect the future, which is actually a combination of the present and the past, with the best parts of both.”

In 2002, a 12,400 square foot addition to the school, designed by local architect Nolan Bingham of the Paris Bingham Partnership, was completed along the State Road 58 side of the building.