OHIO UNIVERSITY DEMOLITION Ohio University To Demolish "Haunted" Tuberculosis Ward
Reported by: Associated Press
Web Producer: Tiersa Davis
Reported: Feb. 8, 2013 10:15 AM EST
Updated: Feb. 8, 2013 10:33 AM EST
Eyewitness News Photo
Athens
, Athens County
, Ohio
Ohio University officials say they're going ahead with the demolition of an historic campus building that student folklore suggests is haunted.
Preservationists had been trying to persuade the university to spare the 88-year-old Ridges Building 26, or old Beacon School. It was built as a tuberculosis ward to a historically significant state mental hospital that operated on the property for more than a century beginning in 1868.
But The Columbus Dispatch reports that OU announced this week that the building will be razed next month.
The building is empty, and OU has said it is an "attractive nuisance," frequently subject to trespassing and vandalism.
The university obtained the building and others collectively known as The Ridges from the Ohio Department of Mental Health in a land swap.
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Associated Press
