Indiana School for the Deaf

About this property

Indiana School for the Deaf (ISD) is a fully accredited school for the deaf and hard of hearing, located in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. William Willard, a Deaf educator trained under Laurent Clerc, founded what would become the Indiana School for the Deaf (ISD) in the mid-19th century. In the early 1800s, formal schooling for deaf individuals was emerging in the United States; the first school opened in 1817 in Connecticut, and by the 1840s, Indiana's leaders recognized the need for a local institution. Willard had lost his hearing as a child due to illness and attended the American Asylum in Hartford. By 1843 he was teaching at the Ohio School for the Deaf when he was invited to establish a school in Indiana. He and his wife, Eliza Young Willard, who was also Deaf, traveled across Indiana on horseback to recruit students, motivated by parents like William Bales, a Vermillion County sheriff whose deaf son had to attend an out-of-state school. Their efforts culminated on October 1, 1843, when Willard opened a private school for deaf children in Indianapolis with a first class of about a dozen pupils. The Willards initially taught without pay to prove that deaf children could be educated, prompting Governor Samuel Bigger to urge state support for the fledgling school. In January 1844 the Indiana General Assembly officially chartered Willard's school as a state institution, originally named the Indiana Asylum for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb. Willard became the first principal of the school, which at first operated in a rented facility in downtown Indianapolis. However, prevailing attitudes of the era assumed that a deaf person could not capably administer an institution. In 1846, the legislature appointed a hearing educator, James S. Brown of Ohio, to replace Willard as principal (a position soon retitled superintendent). This decision was made despite Willard's successful leadership and reflected the endemic discrimination of the time: trustees felt a Deaf administrator was inherently disqualified. Willard, while disappointed, stayed on as an instructor and assistant administrator until ill health forced his retirement in 1864. Under Brown and subsequent leaders, the school expanded. In 1847–1850 the state erected its first permanent campus for the "asylum", a large Greek Revival style complex at East Washington Street and State Avenue on Indianapolis's east side. When this new facility opened in October 1850, the school had already grown to serve dozens of students, and its name was shortened to the Indiana Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb. This campus, a stately building with a central five-story tower and flanking wings, would house ISD's operations for the next sixty years.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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