L.C. Ward Education Center

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 3501 Warsaw Street; opened 1931 as an elementary school, later a theatre arts magnet, then the district alternative education center from 2001 to 2017

The Namesake: Louis C. Ward lived from 1878 to 1931 and spent his career inside Fort Wayne classrooms. He joined the high school faculty as an instructor in 1907, became principal of Central High School in 1915, and rose to superintendent of schools in 1920, a post he held until 1931. A Lindenwood Cemetery sketch of his life says that under his leadership new schools were erected and the system climbed to rank with the best in the nation. He also sat on the Indiana State Board of Education as Fort Wayne's superintendent member. When the new southeast side elementary school opened in 1931, the year of his death, the district put his name on it.

The Building: Ward stands at the corner of Warsaw and Oxford Streets in the Oxford neighborhood, a Tudor Revival school designed by Fort Wayne architect Leighton Bowers. ARCH, the city's preservation organization, calls it a case study in elaborate brickwork, with zigzag, chevron and sawtooth patterns, irregular massing and a grand central entrance under a castellated parapet. The district directory for 1948 to 1949 lists it plainly as the Louis C. Ward School, Warsaw and Oxford Streets, reached by the Oxford streetcar to that corner. Generations of southeast side children walked to it. Sharon Tucker, who grew up a half mile away and later represented the area on City Council, remembered walking to Ward for kindergarten through second grade.

Magnet Years: The elementary school's long first life changed character in its later decades, when the building became the district's Theatre Arts Magnet School as part of the FWCS Summit Arts Program. Young performers replaced the old neighborhood enrollment, and a Summit program from 1994 to 1995 still places a fifth grade pupil at Ward Theatre Arts Magnet School. The magnet chapter left a thin paper trail, and its exact years are not pinned down in the district record found for this history. What is documented is the ending: in 2001 the elementary school closed, magnet and all, and the building took on the hardest job in the district.

Alternative Years: From 2001 to 2017 Ward was the district's alternative placement school for students in grades six through twelve. A federal court opinion from 2018, quoting the district's own description, says Ward provided an alternative learning environment for middle and high school students who had been removed from their regular schools for significant rule violations, and that its rules were stricter than those at other FWCS schools for that reason. It stayed small. State meal counts for the site run from ninety-one pupils in October 2008 to one hundred ninety in October 2011, with a high share eligible for free meals. Ward was also one name on a longer alternative education list, funded together with the Expectant Mothers Program, Youth Life Skills and the school inside the Allen County Juvenile Center. That juvenile center school, staffed by FWCS teachers at 2929 Wells Street, was always a separate program, not part of Ward, whatever later rosters implied.

Closure: By 2017 the old building had worn out its welcome as a schoolhouse. FWCS closed it permanently, judging that it required extensive repairs to remain an adequate learning space. The Journal Gazette put the renovation estimate at seven and a half million dollars, against a much lower cost to renovate the former Nebraska Elementary, where the alternative program moved and now runs as the Center for Academic Success at Nebraska. Ward sat vacant for more than three years while the district priced its demolition at two hundred forty three thousand dollars.

The Rescue: Southeast Fort Wayne refused the demolition. On August 7, 2020, about two dozen protesters stood on the school's front steps chanting to save Ward School, backed by the Oxford Neighborhood Association, Councilwoman Sharon Tucker and ARCH. That October the Journal Gazette reported the demolition bid extended again, through January 31, to give preservationists time to find a use. They found one. On January 6, 2021, FWCS announced it would transfer the building at no cost to Neighborhood Health, saving the demolition expense and giving the Oxford neighborhood a health center instead of a vacant lot.

Second Life: The conversion cost about twenty million dollars and remade the forty thousand square foot school as Neighborhood Health Oxford, with primary care, dental care, behavioral health, prenatal care, a pharmacy and a laboratory under one roof. The old gymnasium survives as a community room, with a demonstration kitchen beside it. The clinic opened in June 2025, and the ribbon cutting followed on July 7, 2025. Through 2026 the Warsaw Street building works a full second career in the neighborhood that saved it, and the city cites it among the projects its New Markets Tax Credit fund helped make possible. The school is gone. The building, and Louis Ward's name with it, is still at work.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne Community Schools press release, January 6, 2021: the 1931 opening, Louis C. Ward's superintendency, the Theatre Arts Magnet, the 2001 alternative program, the 2017 closure and the transfer to Neighborhood Health.
2. Arthur Marion Paulison, Pioneers Resting in Historic Lindenwood, 1973: Ward's life dates, his teaching, principal and superintendent years, and his burial.
3. Input Fort Wayne, August 12, 2020, and ARCH Inc. via Allen INGenWeb: the Tudor Revival design, Leighton Bowers, the brickwork, the Oxford neighborhood and the August 2020 protest.
4. Kissinger v. Fort Wayne Community Schools, U.S. District Court, February 26, 2018: the court's description of Ward as an alternative placement school with stricter rules.
5. Fort Wayne Community Schools Board minutes, 2012 to 2015, and the Allen County Juvenile Center information sheet: the alternative education program list and the separate juvenile center school staffed by FWCS.
6. Indiana Department of Education, school nutrition listings, 2008 to 2017: the meal eligibility counts for the Ward site in the alternative years.
7. The Journal Gazette, October 27, 2020: the demolition bid extension and the seven and a half million dollar renovation estimate.
8. Neighborhood Health Annual Report 2025, MSKTD and Associates, and the City of Fort Wayne, January 13, 2026: the twenty million dollar conversion, the June 2025 opening, the clinic services and the building in 2026.