Admired for its architecture since its 1911 construction, the former Jefferson Center building — which was Toledo’s central post office before it became the city school district’s alternative school — has another new life.
With a partnership between ProMedica and Bitwise, a California-based technology company, the downtown building will become an innovation center that executives hope will help Toledo become a vibrant technology hub. The nonprofit health system said the $30 million project, for which renovations are slated to begin late this year, will bring tech jobs to the area and will train residents, particularly in underserved communities, with the necessary skills to enter the industry.
It’s also a rebirth of the historic building, said Randy Oostra, ProMedica’s president and chief executive officer.
The building has always served a civic purpose throughout its 110-year existence. The federal government broke ground for it in 1909 after buying the block bounded by 13th and 14th streets and Madison and Jefferson avenues for $135,000 in 1907. James Knox Taylor, the supervising architect of the U.S. Department of Treasury at the time, designed the building, and $500,000 later, Toledo had its post office.
The building’s design, led by Mr. Taylor who is credited as the supervising architect for dozens of federal buildings including many post offices, received widespread praise upon its introduction to Toledo.
“Uncle Sam’s Toledo postal depot, where all merchandise mail matter is handled, is one of the most artistic, aptly designed and commodious post offices in the United States,” a photo caption printed in the Feb. 22, 1913 edition of The Blade proclaimed.
The building featured a “spy gallery,” an enclosed balcony with secret passages that overlooked the main room. Postal inspectors used this to watch operations undetected.
The building served its original purpose for 55 years until operations moved in 1966, following the Christmas mail rush, to Toledo’s current main post office on South St. Clair Street. But while the former post office is treasured for its graceful architecture and has escaped demolition several times, it also is tied to the biggest robbery in Toledo history.
On Feb. 17, 1921, 21-year-old Joseph Urbaytis, with the help of some of his closest pals, robbed a mail truck at the back of the post office. The gun-toting gang emerged from a car after the truck they had tailed reached a loading dock and stole securities, cash, and bank notes before fleeing.
They escaped with nearly $1.6 million — indexed for inflation, that would be more than $22.7 million now — in a heist they conceived at an Adams Street tavern after reading about a post office robbery in Illinois.
Urbaytis’ sister Wanda escaped with a considerable amount of cash, and police later found money hidden in the walls of a vacant house in North Toledo. A Toledo priest, the Rev. Anthony Gorek, was given Liberty bonds that he concealed, and he told police he cashed $1,140 in coupons from the stolen bonds having “succumbed to a mighty temptation to thwart the government and use the bonds to buy food for his starving parishioners.”
Police also found money in Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh from the heist, for which more than 30 people ultimately were charged.
Once surplus for the post office, Toledo Public Schools bought the building for $1 from the federal government on condition it be used for educational purposes. It became home to the Jefferson Center for Vocational Rehabilitation until 1970, when it was converted into the district’s alternative school.
Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, the building faced closing in 1989, but the Toledo Board of Education rejected then-Superintendent of Schools Ruth Scott’s recommendation to shut the alternative school down. That use endured until 2000, when district voters rejected a 6.9-mill levy request that forced TPS to cut about $15 million from its budget.
The now-vacant building was targeted for demolition in 2011, but the school board held back. Instead, ProMedica bought it for $1.2 million in 2019 with a vision of bringing an incubator hub to Toledo right away, Mr. Oostra said.
“We bought it kind of quietly, and at the time people said they didn’t know what we were going to do with it, but we had a pretty clear idea of what we’d like to have done with it, and that’s kind of what’s playing out today,” he said.
Robin Whitney, ProMedica’s chief strategic planning, business development, and real estate officer, said the building’s rebirth restores it as a useful community resource.
“We’ve been talking with Toledo Public Schools for a couple of years on how to redevelop this and really bring it back into being an asset for our community instead of just being a shuttered building,” she said.
Mr. Oostra said the historic building’s preservation is an important aspect of the renovated center and ProMedica’s decision to bring it back to use, but the potential to bring jobs to the area and train diverse, underserved communities to obtain competitive jobs in a sustainable industry, could write the best chapter of the building’s history when it’s all said and done, he contends.
“You fast forward and you think about what this could be four or five years from now, having hundreds of tech jobs, if we’re able to do that here, that just lends itself to a lot of of other further development,” he said.
First Published February 24, 2021, 3:29 p.m.
