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Patterson, Robert. "History of the Ohio Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb." In Histories of American Schools for the Deaf, 1817-1893. Edward Allen Fay, ed. 3 volumes Washington, DC: Volta Bureau, 1893.

Page 22

prices of materials and labor," could be purchased or erected for five thousand dollars. But the finances of the State were then greatly absorbed in the construction of canals, and the Board was compelled to rent buildings in Columbus until able to build. It was not until 1832 that an appropriation, part of the dues arising from public sales in Cincinnati, allowed the commencement of the first building which was completed for occupancy in the fall of 1834. The building was fifty feet by eighty and three stories high, costing, with a barn and out-buildings, $15,000. It was designed to accommodate from sixty to eight pupils, and was thought to be sufficiently large to meet the wants of the Institution for many years to come. But in 1845, the attendance of over a hundred necessitated the addition of a wing to the south side, seventy feet by thirty and four stories high. The Institution had now accommodations for one hundred and fifty pupils; but before the lapse of another decade the want of more room was sorely felt, and from that time on the Board, in its annual reports, bombarded the Legislature upon the necessity of additional buildings.

In the spring of 1864, although the State was going through the throes of the Civil War, the Legislature, on account of the dilapidated condition of the original building which was described in public prints as "an uncomely relic of modern antiquity," passed unanimously a bill, providing for the erection of a new house, "to be of plain and substantial construction, having special adaptation and proper economy for the convenient and suitable accommodation of three hundred and fifty pupils and necessary officers and servants." The Governor, instead of the Board, was empowered to carry out the provisions of the act. The ground was broken on the 30th of June, 1864, in the rear of the old building, and the middle of the following autumn witnessed the laying of the corner-stone. In the spring of 1867, while the new house was still in process of construction, an epidemic, which proved to be typhoid fever, broke out, claiming for its victims five of the pupils. The school was immediately disbanded to arrest the advancing progress of the epidemic. To use the language of the Institution physician: "The probably cause of this epidemic-added to the prevalent bad influence of [the]season, [and] the interruption of the already defective ventilation of the old building by the construction of the new building and all its extensive

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