Location: 211 E. Main Street, Ottawa, Illinois
Ottawa Township High School is situated at the point where the Fox and Illinois rivers meet and is just a block from downtown Ottawa. The school contains grades 9-12 and has an average yearly enrollment of 1600 students. The size of the school has grown over the years to be nearly 350,000 square feet. The Main Building was built in 1916 and contains the administrative offices, theater, library, pool, a gymnasium, and classrooms. The Manual Arts Building and Kingman Gym were built to the east of the Main Building in 1931 and includes more classrooms, a cafeteria and agriculture/auto shop. In 1937 the Passageway bridge was built to link the Main Building to the Manual Arts building. The Shannon Building was built in 1961 to the south of the existing buildings providing an additional link between the two buildings. The Shannon building houses science and art labs, music rooms, as well as additional general classrooms.
In 1987 Ottawa High School, started working with W. C. Fredricks & Associates, the firm which would evolve into Basalay, Cary and Alstadt Architects. Ottawa High School and BC&A Architects have remained partners ever since. Over the course of the last 32 years there are few parts of the school that BC&A Architects has not had a hand in maintaining or updating through projects large and small.
