Greenfield, Ohio ? Showing students a Michelangelo statue is as easy as a stroll down the hall at Edward Lee McClain High School in southwest Ohio.

It is a replica, of course, put there by Lulu McClain, the civic-minded wife of the school’s namesake and founder, who filled the 1915 building with paintings, friezes, murals and statues. The latter included two life-size marble replicas of Michelangelo sculptures housed in Florence’s San Lorenzo Chapel.

“I know former students who come back and say, ‘My professors at college says, “No, there can’t be anything like that,'” said art teacher Dan Crusie, who retired last year after almost three decades at McClain.

The pieces, most donated by McClain and his wife, are examples of an educational philosophy that swept the country during the early 20th century and lasted through the Depression. Such art collections often have played into decisions to save old buildings.

“As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure,” education philosopher John Dewey wrote in his 1934 book, “Art as Experience.”

“It wasn’t uncommon to find patrons of schools around that time who wanted to uplift the spirits through art, particularly in smaller towns where the school was the center for the community and was seen as the showpiece,” said Royce Yeater, Midwest director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

In Greenfield, the state reversed a decision to abandon McClain High School and build a new structure in part because of the school’s holdings, said principal Dan Strain.

Security precautions

In Spokane, Wash., community sentiment for hundreds of paintings in Lewis and Clark High School was part of a decision to spend $40 million to renovate the building in 1998, said Associate Schools Superintendent Mark Anderson.

The school doesn’t have any special security precautions for its art collection but maintains a catalog detailing each work and its location in the school, according to John Hook, assistant principal.

Chicago schools also do not provide extra security for their own extensive collection, although there are guards at the entrance to every school and principals are vigilant, said Rene Arceo, visual arts coordinator for Chicago schools.

The Art Institute’s women’s board began commissioning murals in Chicago in 1908. Over the years, this has led to an art collection of hundreds of paintings recently valued and insured at $20 million. It includes “The Canyon Trail” by Ernest Martin Hennings, a 1920 oil painting rescued from a trash container by a janitor. It was later valued at $300,000.

In Lindsborg, Kan., population 3,321, the Smoky Valley School district owns 10 oil paintings and dozens of prints by the Swedish-American landscape painter Birger Sandzen. The collection is valued at about $1 million.

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the district owns hundreds of paintings, part of a legacy that began in 1912 with a tradition of community members donating or commissioning works of art.

In Cincinnati, much of the district’s extensive collection of paintings, fountains, stained glass and tile decorations were purchased by The Art League beginning in 1903 with pennies donated by schoolchildren. Last year, photographer Robert Flischel documented this legacy in his book, “An Expression of the Community: Cincinnati Public Schools’ Legacy of Art and Architecture.”

At McClain High School, stone sphinxes replicas of originals in the Louvre in Paris greet visitors to the brick-and-limestone building. Nearby, Michelangelo’s giant statues of Lorenzo and Guiliano de’Medici tower over students.

A replica of the frieze of the Parthenon dominates the upper portion of a wall on the school’s first-floor corridor.

‘Teaching environment’

Most of the school’s works are reproductions, although the collection includes some originals, such as the Bust of Ginevra by Hiram Powers, a Cincinnati artist who moved to Italy in the 1830s. It was presented to McClain High in 1928.

The school has commissioned an appraisal of its art collection’s value.

“It’s an honor to go in and see all that art work at school,” said Katy Bond, 18, a senior who often sketches the paintings during study hall.

McClain, who died in 1934, built the school with riches made patenting a horse collar pad fastened by an elastic steel hook.

“It’s a tremendous teaching environment for world history, for Latin, for art,” Strain said. “It’s not uncommon to visit the building and have an art class sitting here, either sketching themselves or one of these works or being instructed in what their symbolism is.”