Collingwood Arts Center
Built in 1905 by the Ursuline Nuns — with its oldest wing dating to 1872 — the Collingwood Arts Center occupies a fifteen-building Catholic campus in Toledo’s Old West End. Where novices once took their vows, more than eighty working artists now keep studios. The chapel is still standing. The community it was built for has simply changed.
A Convent That Became Something Else
The Ursuline Sisters raised the complex at 2413 Collingwood Boulevard in 1905, attaching it to an older 1872 structure and turning the whole block into a self-contained religious campus — residences, classrooms, a chapel, performance halls, and interior gardens, all connected by quiet corridors. The Sisters operated here for the better part of a century before stepping away.
In 1985 the campus was acquired for arts use, and the Collingwood Arts Center — Toledo’s largest artist community — took up residence inside the buildings it inherited. The bones are unchanged. Much of the original architectural detail is intact.
What It Is Today
Per the Center itself: more than eighty active studios, three theaters, a historic mansion on the property, and — in its own words — even a circus. The resident community spans painters, sculptors, photographers, fiber artists, printmakers, musicians, performers, and aerialists. The three theaters host plays, concerts, film, burlesque, and a rotating calendar of stranger things.
The Center’s stated mission: “Create community through art while preserving our historic building.” Tours, openings, and public events appear regularly on its calendar; check current programming before visiting.
Why It’s on This List
The Center doesn’t advertise itself as haunted — and we won’t either. But an 1872 chapel inside a 1905 convent, full of working studios where novices once slept, is the kind of place that belongs in a directory like this for its own reasons. It is one of the most atmospheric buildings in Toledo, it is genuinely historic, and it is full of the people the Black Swamp Horror was made for.
Visit
Address. 2413 Collingwood Blvd, Toledo, OH 43620
Web. collingwoodartscenter.org