With closure on the horizon, Elgin Academy celebrates 185th birthday

As Elgin Academy prepares to close its doors permanently at the end of the school year, school officials are doing their best to celebrate the present while preserving their past.

The pre-K through 12th grade independent school celebrated its 185th birthday on Thursday with an all-school assembly that included 185 candles blown out by students, confetti cannons and singing of the school hymn.

On Saturday, the school will host about 100 alumni, staff and others in the school community for the opening of a new exhibit at the Elgin History Museum highlighting the school’s legacy.

It’s a bittersweet time for people invested in the school, including Laura Anderson, a board of trustees member who put her two kids through Elgin Academy.

“I don’t like it. I hate every minute of it, but I want to celebrate,” she said. “I want to celebrate it, and I don’t want to be sad. I just want us to go out on a positive note, which we’re doing a really good job of inside the school with our kids.”

The school’s trustees and leadership announced in November that the 2023-24 school year would be its last due to dwindling enrollment that had seen the number of students fall by about 50% in the last 10 years, causing a budget shortfall of $4 million last school year.

“We have always struggled. There have been many times we’ve almost gone under,” she said, noting they sold their art collection in 1967 to stay open. “The world is always changing. Now with college costing anywhere from $60,000 to $80,000 a year, it’s impossible to expect people to spend $30,000 on the upper (high) school.

“The math has gotten crazy,” Anderson said. “And to run a program like we’ve run with all the courses we offer, it’s expensive.”

Anderson and other staff members and trustees have created the museum exhibit to be a lasting reminder of how intertwined the city and the school were.

The fit is natural since the Elgin History Museum building, known as “Old Main,” was the original campus building when Elgin Academy opened in 1839. The school donated it to the city in 1976 with the provision that they could use one room as a classroom.

“Old Main is us, it’s our history,” Anderson said. “Now everybody can go in and see how basically all the Founding Fathers of Elgin had something to do with starting Elgin Academy.”

That room will now house a visual history of the school with a series of boards on the walls that start with its founding by James Gifford, telling its story as you move around the room. The exhibit also features memorabilia like the Academy Bell and old photos, books and sports paraphernalia from over the years.

The museum plans to hold a public event to celebrate sometime in March.

Anderson said helping with the exhibit has reinforced to her what a legacy and impact the school has had on Elgin, which makes coming to grips with the closing a little easier.

“I don’t ever want our history to die,” she said. “I want people to understand the impact we’ve had here.”

Elgin Academy through the years

• Feb. 22, 1839 — The Free Will Baptists charter a school approved by the Illinois legislature.

• 1856 — Elgin Academy opens under headmaster Robert Blenkiron. “Old Main” was the first building on campus. Designed in a Greek revival style, it was built with local Dundee brick by Edwin Reeves and Joshua Wilbur.

• 1861-1865 — School remained dormant during the Civil War as 153 students, teachers, administrators and trustees went off to fight alongside Union troops. Of those, 19 people were killed or died of war wounds.

• 1872 — First graduating class with only one graduate, Laura Davidson, who later taught at the school and served as a trustee.

• Notable graduate — Jimmy John Liautaud, Class of 1982, founder of Jimmy John’s sandwich shop chain.