The Oscar C. McCulloch School No. 5 was built in 1922 near the current site of the Indiana State Museum. Using terra cotta detailing as well as original architectural features from School No. 5, a re-creation of the school’s façade graces the Great Hall of the Indiana State Museum.
Serving Indianapolis’ most diverse ethnic neighborhood, the Oscar McCulloch School No. 5 was part school and part social services headquarters. The school was once a mix of Slovakian, Romanian, Greek, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Appalachian whites, Gypsies, Chinese and African–American students.
Personnel at School No. 5, striving to help students and their families become successful Americans, offered English and citizenship classes for immigrant adults and staffed Indianapolis’ first educational facility for children with disabilities. The institution housed free dental and baby clinics as well as Indiana’s first permanent mental health clinic. From 1930 to 1940, it served as the home of a free kindergarten.
Oscar McCulloch School No. 5 was one of Indianapolis’ most elaborately decorated schools. The formal design and elaborate decoration of this school were intended to inspire the mostly poor immigrant families living in 
its district and to persuade them that education was the path to a better future. Designed by an Indianapolis architect, Robert Frost Daggett, the building was a flat–roofed, three–story, H–shaped structure of brown brick anchored on a raised basement.
During the late 1940s, attendance at School No. 5 began to drop as first, industry and then, redevelopment took over the old immigrant neighborhood. After a decade as a school for mentally handicapped and emotionally disturbed children, the building closed in 1978 when these students were mainstreamed into regular classes.