A History of
Aiken High School
Aiken High School opened in the fall of 1962 as Cincinnati’s
first campus type comprehensive neighborhood high school.
The first year enrollments included 9th, 10th,
and 11th grades.
The school became a four-year high school in 1963 and
graduated our first class of seniors in June of 1964.
The school was named in the honor of Charles Aiken and
his two sons, Walter and Louis, who were long-time residents
of College Hill and Cincinnati.
These men contributed 127 years of career time in the
field of music to the Cincinnati Public Schools.
The father, Charles Aiken, was Superintendent of Music
for our city schools; his son, Walter, later served as
Director of Music.
The school is located on an educationally historic site
in College Hill where it encompasses more than 60 acres of
wooded terrain. In
1833, Mr. Freemen G. Cary founded the Pleasant Hill Academy on
a parcel of this land; it was established as an agricultural
institution in 1845 and re-named Farmer’s College.
On January 31, 1844, this school on Belmont Avenue was
named Belmont College, and in 1890 it provided the nucleus of
the Ohio Military Institution that remained there until June
7, 1958.
The consideration for the building of Aiken High School
came about in 1956 when the members of the Board of Education
allocated funds for a high school in the Northside-College
Hill area. The
new school was needed because of the overcrowding in both
Hughes and Woodward High Schools, and because of
transportation difficulties to those high schools for students
from this rapidly growing community.
In 1957 school officials learned that consideration was
being given by the Board of Trustees of the Ohio Military
Institute to liquidate. The
Cincinnati Board of Education made an offer of $185,000 for
47.15 acres of land and the building thereon.
It was accepted by O.M.I.
In addition, the Board of Education agreed to store
O.M.I. records and preserve and display certain mementos from
the school’s past. Additional
wooded land was acquired in 1958 from Carl and Marie Kloos for
properties fronting on Belmont and Glenview Avenues allowed
for better planning for this campus style building complex.
On August 29, 1960, contracts totaling $2,353,497 were
awarded for the construction of a four-year high school
consisting of five buildings with a total capacity of 1200
students. By
1963, modifications had to be made for the construction of two
additional buildings to be opened during the 1964-65 school
year.
Planning for building eight started in 1969 with the
appointment of community committees, with additional
representatives from business and industry, to survey the
needs for vocational education.
Construction began in 1972 and was completed in the
summer of 1974 at a cost of approximately $3,500,000.
The ninth building was completed for use in September
of 1979.
Under a Small Learning Communities Initiative from the
Gates Foundation, Aiken became three small schools in the
2002-2003 school year. Aiken Traditional, which
was phases out in 2006, was
created to house students wishing to complete a general course
of high school study. Aiken
Public Service Learning (now Aiken College and Career)
opened to freshmen interested in pursuing a career in public
service fields. Aiken University offered a strong college preparatory program, focusing on opportunities
to earn college credit while in high school.
In 2007 Aiken University
adopted an environmental studies focus.
