Washington Elementary School in Elgin celebrates 125 years

When Washington Elementary School opened 125 years ago, on a hilltop a mile west of downtown Elgin, it featured a heralded modern advance - indoor privies, and soon even running water and flush toilets. No more winter trips to the outhouse, away from the fireplaces that kept each classroom warm and cozy.

Marking the big birthday, the school recently had its students plant a tree in the front yard and the next day hosted several hundred alumni, parents and neighbors in an open house. And that was an eye opener for some people who had attended Washington 50 or 60 years ago and now found a school with computers, a lunchroom, and a gym.

Faced in the 1980s and 1990s with several obsolescent old multistory brick and stone elementary schools that had been built in Elgin in the 1890s, Elgin Area School District U-46 had torn down some (Grant School, Columbia School, the original Lincoln School, the original Sheridan School), sold Wing School for conversion into an apartment building, and sold Franklin School to a shelter for battered women.

But Washington, like McKinley, Garfield and Lowrie schools, was spared the wrecking ball and actually was expanded and modernized in two projects during the 1990s.

Fond memories

Joel Brumbaugh, who attended from 1968-1975, recalled how in those days when few mothers had jobs, every child would walk home at noon and eat a home-cooked lunch while watching "Bozo's Circus" on TV. Now every child eats in a school lunchroom built in the 1990s.

When Brumbaugh attended, the "library" was whatever books each teacher happened to collect on a couple shelves in her room. Now the former attic contains a full-fledged library - plus a computer lab.

Karen Smith, a student at Washington in 1965-1972, was one of several alums who remembered a tubelike winding fire escape slide. Now considered too dangerous for student use, that was removed during one of the building expansions.

Many kids had looked forward to being allowed to slide down it - especially if they got to be the first in line and kick open the steel door at the bottom of the slide. But Smith said she dreaded going down it during fire drills.

"It was so tight and scary, and I ended with friction burns on my skin," she said.

Chris Hutson, a 1983 graduate, recalled how kids climbed up the other fire escape - a steel stairs that is still used - and dropped pumpkins off the top to see them smash on the asphalt playground below.

That inspired a teacher to start an annual "egg drop" competition that still continues. Students now are challenged to build some kind of cushioning or cage that will allow an egg to fall from the top of the fire escape without breaking.

Flat George

Third-grade teacher Annette Verchota, who has been teaching at Washington since 1978, is one of three teachers retiring at the end of the school year. She said her classes are celebrating the birthday - and learning some geography and computer literacy - by reaching out across the United States.

"We Googled 'Washington School' and found at least one other Washington School in every state except four," Verchota said. "So we mailed a 'flat George Washington' figure to each one, and now the other schools are sending responses back to us."

Updates and expansions

Principal Lori Brandes said the architects who planned two expansions were remarkably able to duplicate the original 1890s Richardson Romanesque look and even preserved some of the indoor touches. For example, the old fireplaces no longer can hold a fire - what once was a forest of brick chimneys on the roof has been removed - but they are still visible.

One center of attention at the open house was the bell that used to hang in the attic. Alumni recalled how the janitor, pulling a rope from 20 feet below, would ring the bell 10 minutes before starting time to remind kids in the neighborhood that it was time to start walking to school.

Brandes said the bell had been taken out of the attic some 35 to 40 years ago. Someone discovered it in District U-46's warehouse, and it was brought back home for the open house.

The student body's ethnicity has changed drastically since 1892, or even since the 1960s. For many years almost 100 percent white, the students are now about 70 percent Hispanic, 15 percent white and 15 percent African American.

"We now have more dual-language classes than gen-ed classes," Brandes said. "But we are still a neighborhood school. Every student walks or gets dropped off by a parent."

George's return

One attraction at the open house had come with a mystery attached. A portrait of George Washington that had been donated to the school in 1899 suddenly showed up in the mail last fall.

The man who sent it had found the painting hidden behind a portrait of an American Indian inside a picture frame he had bought at a Goodwill store in Colorado.

Elgin researchers believe the picture was presented as a gift to the school by the family of a girl named Laura Bunker when she graduated from eighth grade in 1899. Bunker died in the 1950s in California.

Exactly how and when the portrait left Washington School and made its way to a Goodwill store in Colorado remains a mystery. But Brandes said George will remain on a wall at Washington.