Our Story
The
Jefferson Center
for Learning and the Arts takes its name from
Columbus’ Jefferson Avenue, a street that in turn was named for
Thomas Jefferson who signed the original land grant for the area.
In the mid 1880s,
Jefferson Avenue became a residential development
called East Park Place. Its residents were ministers
(including the renowned reformer Washington Gladden), jewelers, druggists, and
even a humorists-to-be (James Thurber lived with his family here in the 1910s).
East Park Place’s broad avenues, of which Jefferson was one, were noted for attractive Italianate homes and a series
of small island parks that occupied the centers of the broad streets.
Gradual deterioration similar to that experienced by
other inner-city blocks throughout the country had robbed the community of much
of its charm by the 1950’s.
The once handsome buildings had fallen into disrepair and the
automobile was infringing on the parks. The construction of Interstate 71 during the early 1960s very nearly
completed the destruction. It divided what was left of East Park Place
leaving Jefferson Avenue
separated from adjacent neighborhoods
The
Arthur I. Vorys family, sensing the need both for preservation of what was left
of the neighborhood that gave the world James Thurber, and determined to find a
place for small charitable, religious, educational, and scientific, and cultural
organizations, purchased most of the buildings along Jefferson Avenue between
Spring and Broad Streets. The
family then donated the buildings to the newly chartered (1975) Jefferson Center for Learning and the Arts with the provision that
they be preserved and made available at low rent to not for profit organizations
During the past three decades, the
Jefferson Center
for Learning and the Arts has embraced the Vorys family approach. Additional
buildings have been purchased and along with the original houses have been given
a restored and adapted to the needs of not for profits. Refurbished in a style approximating
their original condition but adapted for contemporary office usage, the homes
now provide space for twenty-eight nonprofit organizations. The
Jefferson
Center for Learning and the Arts acts as the owner and
manager, leasing the houses at sub-market rates to these organizations.
The
Jefferson
Center’s approach resulted in the creation of one of the
first multiple tenant non profit centers in the country (long before such
developments became a “movement”) and in 1983 designation as the
Jefferson Avenue National Register of Historic Places District.
The
moment you turn the corner onto
Jefferson Avenue, you have the sense that this is a
place where history provides the setting for experimentation. You can’t miss the
strong shape and lines of the gazebo at the south entry to the elliptical park,
the setting for musical performances.
A closer look reveals two galleries that provide venues for local
artists. The bronze unicorn gazing among the lilies in a garden befitting a
James Thurber’s fable and the dogs, real Thurber ones (four, maybe five if you
search well into the reading garden by Thurber House), hint at the block’s
association with one of the nation’s most innovative humorists.
The real historical gems however, are the handsome houses, now more
than 125 years old, with generous porches, grand front doors yet more friendly
for the years of wear, wrought iron fences and limestone hitching posts.
Behind and along side these features, twenty-eight
organizations are busy dealing with both today and tomorrow.
They include a literary center that teaches children to write; an
international house with six organizations working on international programming
and global issues; agencies whose mission it is to protect children or assist
battered women; small performing groups; and of course, historical
organizations. The latter include the
Columbus Historical Society, Columbus Landmarks Foundation, and the Thurber
House.
The
present tenant group is but the latest in succession of organizations that have
served Columbus and indeed all of Ohio.
In its thirty-three year history, the Jefferson Center has provided a home to
more than 250 not for profits, including the National Trust’s Ohio statewide
affiliate, many of whom have moved on to larger facilities.
The original Jefferson Center
trustees did not know Jane Jacobs, the famous urban activists, but they shared
her perspective on old buildings. “Cities need old buildings so badly,” she once
observed, “that it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to
grow without them,” because the high cost of occupying new buildings is
prohibitive for the small or newly established enterprises. As both the
Jefferson Center
for Learning and the Arts and Jacobs came to understand, time and circumstances
can make the expensive buildings of one generation an economic and artistic
bargain for those that follow. Striking
that bargain is what the Jefferson
Center is so committed to doing