South Perry Township School

It’s 1923, and these fifth and six graders are posing for their class photo outside their school building:

They are not “Upper Arlington” students per se, as this land — near the corner of today’s Fishinger and Reed roads — is approximately thirty years away from being annexed into our city. But in 1923, these Perry Township children were schooled on land that we know today as UA.

It appears the school was racially integrated; at this time, we do not have any further information. The students’ names are listed on the back of this photo as follows:

Southern Perry Township had four schools prior to 1920:

  • Fairview School (corner of today’s Tremont Road and Lane Avenue)

  • Stony Point School (near intersection of today’s Fishinger Road and Riverside Drive)

  • Swamp College (south side of today’s McCoy Road between Kenny and Reed roads)

  • Woody Bower (south side of today’s Henderson Road closer to Riverside Drive)

Can you find them on this 1872 map? Hint: make sure you are looking at the bottom of the map. They are labeled as “S.H.” (school house) with numbers 4, 5, and 9 (Woody Bower is missing its number!).

Around 1920, these were consolidated into South Perry Township school, as seen below:

Hedwig Geyer stands in front of the South Perry Township School on Fishinger Road east of Reed Road, circa 1920. Courtesy of UA Historical Society via the UAPL’s UA Archives site.

The school building still stands, facing Fishinger Road just east of Reed Road as part of The Wellington School. Older UA residents may have known this as Fishinger Road Elementary School. After annexation, this school became part of the Upper Arlington school district in 1954, was used into the 1970s before being decommissioned, and then the building was sold to Wellington in the early 1980s.

We also have the third and fourth classes from South Perry Township school in 1923 in our Archives, shown here along with notes from the back of the image: