{"nrhp_refnum":"05000025","name":"McKinley School","other_names":["West Milton County Normal School"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"240 S. Main St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"West Milton","county":"Miami County","state":"OH","lat":39.95956673500007,"lon":-84.32755334299998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2005-04-22","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Education","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"McKinley School is a two-story brick Neoclassical Revival school with a raised basement at 240 South Main Street in West Milton, Miami County, Ohio. It was built in 1909 to a design by architect Elmer L. Gerber of Dayton and now serves as senior housing.","why_significant":"Under Criterion A, it represents an early 20th century village school built by local citizens to house all grades in one building. It was also the first state-supported County Normal School in Ohio established after the 1914 Rural School Codes Act, training teachers from 1914 to 1927. Under Criterion C, it is a monumental Neoclassical Revival school with distinctive architectural treatment on three facades.","narrative":"McKinley School is a two-story brick building with a raised basement on a rise at 240 South Main Street in West Milton, Ohio. Completed in 1909 to designs by Dayton architect Elmer L. Gerber, it replaced an 1874 school on the same site and gave the village a fireproof, centralized building for all grades. Its main facade features a projecting pavilion with a round-arched entry, paired Ionic limestone columns and a Flemish-style parapet, and limestone insets honoring Irving, Edison, Goethe and Mozart. From 1914 to 1927 the school housed the first state-supported county normal school established in Ohio under the Rural School Codes Act, graduating over 200 teachers. It is also the only institutional building remaining in the village from the early twentieth century. In the early 1980s it was converted to senior housing; the interior was subdivided, but pressed tin ceilings, original Craftsman front doors and the large original front and rear windows survive.","period_of_significance":"1909-1938","architect_builder":"Elmer Louis Gerber","architectural_style":"Late 19th and 20th Century Revivals / Classical Revival (Neoclassical Revival)","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Converted to senior housing in the early 1980s; currently used as multiple dwelling (studio apartments). Exterior largely intact apart from window replacement and a rear vestibule addition.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:52:07.825718-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_OH/05000025.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/05000025/0490e50759-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/05000025/0490e50759-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Nyttend","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McKinley_School_in_West_Milton.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Nyttend</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McKinley_School_in_West_Milton.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71990315","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q138589794"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/ohio/miami-county/mckinley-school-05000025/"}