Oldest building on Ohio State's campus, where two late-curfew students were reportedly let in by Rutherford B. Hayes — who had died two weeks before the building opened.
108 N Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Active academic building; exterior accessible from the North Oval at any time, interior access during business hours.
Access
Limited Access
Historic 1893 academic building, partially renovated
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1893 · Ohio State University Founding Era · Yost & Packard Architecture · Rutherford B. Hayes Memorial · Oldest Extant Campus Building
Hayes Hall was completed in 1893 as part of Ohio State University's first major campus expansion. Designed by Yost & Packard in a Romanesque idiom matching its slightly older sibling Orton Hall, the building's front facade has remained essentially untouched from its original appearance — a fact that figures in OSU's case for the building's historic-preservation designation.
The namesake, Rutherford B. Hayes, was the 19th U.S. President (1877-1881) and a two-term Governor of Ohio before that. He served on OSU's Board of Trustees and was an active advocate for the young university. He died at his Spiegel Grove estate in Fremont, Ohio on January 17, 1893 — roughly two weeks before the building bearing his name opened to students. He never saw the completed building in life.
Originally a men's dormitory, Hayes Hall has been adapted many times over the past 130 years. It is now home to OSU's Department of Design within the College of Arts and Sciences, and is one of the most photographed buildings on the North Oval.
Sources
Per The Lantern's 2014 OSU hauntings reporting and the Delaware County Historical Society's archival summary of the story, the Hayes Hall tale is one of the most-repeated ghost stories at Ohio State. The setting is the late-1910s/early-1920s, when Hayes Hall functioned as a men's dormitory. Two students arrived back at the building well past curfew, expecting a reprimand. Instead, a bearded older man met them at the door, unlocked it, and quietly let them upstairs.
The next day the students passed a portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes hanging in a campus corridor and recognized him as the man who had let them in. Hayes had died on January 17, 1893 — roughly two weeks before Hayes Hall opened to students. He had never lived in the building in life.
The Delaware County Historical Society notes that the story is repeated in OSU's own institutional histories, and that variants of it appear in Lantern coverage going back decades. Modern reports of activity at Hayes Hall are scattered and informal — primarily sensed-presence accounts from students and staff working in the building after hours.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Hayes Hall's Romanesque facade is among the most-photographed exteriors on OSU's North Oval; the interior is an active Department of Design teaching space and casual public access is limited to lobby corridors.
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Columbus, OH
Orton Hall opened in 1893 as Ohio State University's geology building and remains home to the OSU School of Earth Sciences and the Orton Geological Museum. Designed by Yost & Packard in the Romanesque style, its exterior is built of forty different Ohio building stones arranged in geologic time order, with fossil carvings on the column capitals. It is named for Edward Orton Sr., the university's first president and Ohio's State Geologist until his death in 1899.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPCleveland, OH
The building at 736 Lakeview Avenue in the Glenville area of Cleveland, Ohio, originally functioned as a nursing home facility. The structure was vacant for approximately ten years before being repurposed as Virtual Schoolhouse, an alternative educational institution serving at-risk students in grades K-12.
Berea, OH
Kohler Hall stood on Baldwin Wallace University's south campus in Berea, Ohio, in a building that existed by 1858. Before Baldwin Wallace acquired the property in 1913, it served variously as a Methodist children's home and as a hospital and morgue during the Civil War. It was a student dormitory until it was retired from service in 2018 and slated for demolition.