Ohio State University

Ohio State University is a public land-grant academic university in Columbus, Ohio, generally known as Ohio State or OSU.

The university was originally known as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, and was established in 1870 as the state’s land-grant university and the ninth university in Ohio under the Morrill Act of 1862. Since then the main campus in Columbus, Ohio, has developed into the United States’ third-largest university campus. Regional campuses in Lima, Mansfield, Marion, Newark, and Wooster are also run by the university.

Ohio State is one of the largest American institutions, with almost 50,000 undergraduate students and almost 15,000 doctoral students. With over 1,000 student societies; intercollegiate, club and recreational sports programs; student media organizations and magazines, fraternities and sororities; and three student councils, it has a comprehensive student life network.

In Division I of the NCAA, the Ohio State athletic teams play and are known as the Ohio State Buckeyes. Athletes from Ohio State have won 104 Olympic medals since the 2016 Summer Olympics (46 gold, 35 silver, and 23 bronze). For the bulk of athletics, the university is a member of the Big Ten Conference.

The 1,764-acre (714 ha) main campus of Ohio State is approximately 2.5 miles (4.0 km) north of the city’s downtown. The historical nucleus of the campus is the Oval, an 11-acre quad (4.5 ha). Hale Hall (originally Enarson Hall), Hayes Hall, Ohio Stadium, and Orton Hall are four buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Ohio State University campus is a blend of conventional, contemporary and post-modern designs, unlike former public universities such as Ohio University and Miami University, whose campuses have a consistent architectural theme. The William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library is the oldest branch and largest archive of the Ohio State Library, anchored at the western end of the Oval.

The Thompson Library was designed in 1913 by the Boston firm of Allen and Collens in the Italianate Renaissance Revival style, and its placement on the Oval was suggested by the Olmsted Brothers who had designed New York City’s Central Park. The Thompson Library began a $100-million restoration in 2006 to preserve the classic Italian Renaissance style of the structure.

—Times Read