UA Archives | Upper Arlington History

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UA Archives | Upper Arlington History

The UA Archives digital collections are provided by the Upper Arlington Public Library.

Through the UA Archives, the library partners with local organizations and individuals to digitally preserve UA’s historical resources and make them available online. For questions about the UA Archives and Upper Arlington's history, please contact the Upper Arlington Public Library Reference Department at [email protected] or (614) 486-3342.

06/04/2026

This year marks the 5th graduation from the current Upper Arlington High School.

To get to the modern building we see standing today at 1625 Zollinger Road, it is important to know where education in Upper Arlington began.

In 1918, a school was built at the corner of Arlington and Tremont Road. It was designed by Edgar Outcalt and supposedly constructed from material leftover from Camp Willis—hence the name: the Barracks School. Three teachers taught 52 students in grades 1-9 in a building that had heating and plumbing.

1919 saw the Barracks School rolled down Arlington Avenue on old telephone poles to Waltham Road where it was deposited at the current location of the Devon Pool. That must’ve been something to see! The move came due to a need for more classroom space to teach up to grade 11.

In 1924 the lower grades were moved to the just-built Upper Arlington School (currently Jones Middle School), which was then expanded just 2 years later to accommodate all students through grade 12. In 1939 the building was renamed Upper Arlington High School when the younger students were moved to a different location.

September 17, 1956, brought a fresh round of musical chairs, as the high school students were moved to a new school built at 1650 Ridgeview Road. The class of 1957 was the first to graduate high school from this location and included golf-GOAT Jack Nicklaus. The location was ultra-modern for its time—boasting a theater, a library with a fireplace, a science department with specialized laboratories, and a cafeteria that could serve 500 students and teachers.

Over 50 years later, safety concerns for that building led to the construction of the current high school, and the Ridgeview building was demolished.

To view and enlarge these photos and the Ridgeview Road high school dedication program, go to the following links:

https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p4036coll10/id/576/rec/1
https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p4036coll10/id/582/rec/3
https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p4036coll10/id/584/rec/3
https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p16276coll7/id/268/rec/5

(Items generously provided to the Upper Arlington Public Library for inclusion in the UA Archives by our partners at the Upper Arlington Historical Society, Karen Williams, and Ann Armstrong Knodt.)

05/13/2026

You might say Anne Cornell Christensen was a Renaissance woman: In addition to teaching in the Grandview Heights, South Perry Township, and Upper Arlington school districts (and serving on the South Perry and Upper Arlington school boards), she was the first female pilot licensed in Indiana, a world champion discus thrower, a restaurant manager, and the host of her own radio program on WOSU. Additional photos, Anne's diary detailing her flying adventures, and an oral history interview with this remarkable UA woman can be found in the UA Archives at: https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p16276coll8/id/4/rec/1

(Oral history interview with Anne Cornell Christensen generously provided to the Upper Arlington Public Library for digitization and inclusion in the UA Archives by our partners at the Upper Arlington Historical Society. Photos, articles, and diary generously provided by Anne's granddaughter, Jennifer Christensen.)

04/23/2026

Big news for UA Golden Bears and local history buffs! UA Archives has digitized the 2006 Upper Arlington High School yearbook, and it’s now available to browse online -- just in time for the 20th reunion.

Take a trip back to the 2005-2006 academic year, a time when students were thrilled to find Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the summer reading list, freshmen braved the legendary SuperGames, and the community came together for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Whether you were walking the halls of UAHS that year or attending high school at another time, another place, these pages capture the universal essence of spirit week, Friday night lights, and lifelong friendships.

This release is just one more piece of our growing yearbook collection, which now spans from the very first 1923 Norwester all the way through 2006. But we aren’t stopping there, as the Upper Arlington Public Library has partnered with the Upper Arlington Schools to add another volume every few months to preserve our history. Dive into the 2006 yearbook today at the link below and rekindle your own high school memories. While you’re there, explore our full digital archives to see how much UA has changed over the decades. Happy reminiscing!

Check out the 2006 yearbook at https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p116001coll1/id/22824/rec/84

(Norwester yearbooks generously provided to the Upper Arlington Public Library for digitization and inclusion in the UA Archives by our partners at the Upper Arlington Schools.)

04/20/2026

Twenty Years Ago, UAHS Alumnus George Smoot Won a Nobel Prize.

In a 1992 press conference, physicist George Smoot said of imaging the cosmic microwave background with NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), “If you’re religious, it’s like seeing God.”

Smoot and his colleague John Mather earned the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work with COBE, detecting minute temperature fluctuations in background radiation that helped confirm the Big Bang Theory.

But in 1962, George Fitzgerald Smoot was just beginning his academic career, as a member of the graduating class of Upper Arlington High School.

Smoot earned dual undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also completed his PhD in experimental particle physics. He spent his professional and research careers at the University of California at Berkeley.

Besides his academic publications, Smoot discussed his work in a 1993 book, Wrinkles in Time, and made a guest appearance as himself on the TV series Big Bang Theory, of which he was a fan. Smoot passed away on September 18, 2025, in Paris, France, where he taught physics at Université Paris-Cité.

To enlarge this image, view it in the UA Archives:
https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p116001coll1/id/9096/rec/40

(Norwester yearbooks generously provided to the Upper Arlington Public Library for digitization and inclusion in the UA Archives by our partners at the Upper Arlington Schools.)

03/27/2026

The Upper Arlington Public Library's first director, Russell E. Walker, appears with Browser Bear in the late 1970s. Walker guided the library system through its early growth, including construction of the Lane Road Library and expansions of the Miller Park Library and the Tremont Library. Walker hired the system's first full-time children's librarian, presided over the conversion to plastic library cards, rebalanced the collection among fiction, nonfiction, and reference materials, and greatly expanded outreach services to the homebound—and to local businesses and Upper Arlington fire stations!

To learn more and enlarge the original image, view it in the UA Archives:
https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p4036coll12/id/84/rec/18

03/26/2026

A young patron gazes curiously at the library's Browser Bear mascot in the early 1970s. Sparking interest in reading remains an important part of Youth Services today—even in a world where "browser" has a quite different meaning than it did in 1970!

To learn more and enlarge the original image, view it in the UA Archives:
https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p4036coll12/id/17/rec/5

03/25/2026

The newest of the Upper Arlington Public Library's buildings, Lane Road began construction in 1974 to serve the rapid northern growth of the city. In late 1975, the old Lane Center Library on Lane Avenue was vacated and its holdings moved to the new facility. The basement of the building was remodeled in 1981 to add a children's area and meeting room, and the building was extensively updated in 2025, streamlining its layout, updating technology, and adding additional meeting areas.

The book History of Upper Arlington outlines the early history of the library into the 1980s, including its adoption of early library technology. Find the library chapter in the UA Archives at https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p15062coll1/id/5570/rec/28

More library history can be found in the book A Cherished Past, a Golden Future, available in the library's Ohio Room. Don't miss reading about the scented cards in the card catalog!

(History of Upper Arlington book generously provided to the Upper Arlington Public Library for digitization and inclusion in the UA Archives by our partners at the Upper Arlington Historical Society.)

03/24/2026

Continuing yesterday's look at the history of the Upper Arlington Public Library: In 1952 and 1955, additional library branches opened in the Lane Avenue Shopping Center and Tremont Shopping Center, respectively. In 1959 a new branch was built at Northam Park, facing Tremont Road, and the Tremont Center's 47,000-volume collection moved across the street.

By 1962, the circulation at the Tremont branch exceeded that of its parent in Grandview Heights, and by 1967 Upper Arlington began serious efforts to establish its own libraries. The Upper Arlington Public Library System was created by the passage of Ohio House Bill No. 494, which took effect December 11, 1967, and the Tremont building became the system's main library.

The building shown totaled 12,650 square feet; its size was nearly doubled by an addition that opened in November 1973, and doubled again in the mid-1980s. Today it is UA's largest library and houses adult, youth, and research collections, three public meeting rooms, and the library system's administrative and technology operations.

To learn more and enlarge the original image, view it in the UA Archives:
https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p4036coll12/id/14/rec/2

03/23/2026

This tiny, 468-square-foot building was the Upper Arlington Company's field office in the early days of Upper Arlington. Shown here in 1921, shortly after it was built, the building also served as UA's first village hall and as a shelter on the streetcar line. Miller Park became Upper Arlington's first library, as a branch of the Grandview Heights Public Library stocked with 600 books, in 1942. It has since been expanded considerably, first in the 1960s (more than tripling its original size) and again in 2007.

To learn more and enlarge the original image, view it in the UA Archives:
https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p4036coll12/id/5/rec/1

(Image from the Norwester magazine generously provided to the Upper Arlington Public Library for digitization and inclusion in the UA Archives by our partners at the Upper Arlington Historical Society.)

03/20/2026

Actress Beverly D'Angelo was honored with a Tradition Hall Profile at Jones Middle School in 1993. The profiles honor professionals in many fields who were Jones alumni, including Rear Admiral Dean Axene, Jack Nicklaus, and Barbara Everitt Bryant, director of the U.S. Census Bureau.

D'Angelo may be best known for her roles in the National Lampoon's Vacation movies with Chevy Chase, but has also been nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her role as Patsy Cline in Coal Miner's Daughter (for which she did her own singing) and for an Emmy Award for her role as Stella Kowalski in a 1984 television presentation of A Streetcar Named Desire. During her earlier years D'Angelo was a student at Upper Arlington High School, where she was a cheerleader.

See more Tradition Hall honorees in the School Archives collection at https://www.uaarchives.org/digital/collection/p16276coll7

(Norwester yearbooks generously provided to the Upper Arlington Public Library for digitization and inclusion in the UA Archives by our partners at the Upper Arlington Schools.)

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