The North School Preservation Society will be holding its 3rd annual Book Sale on Saturday, May 19th, this year inside the old North School at 49 Main Street in North Springfield. The event will mark the beginning of re-use of the 60x60 two-story schoolhouse after being closed down and boarded up for over two decades. A declining birth rate allowed the School District to close it as a neighborhood elementary school in 1984. North Springfield children could now be bused to Springfield schools without creating an overcrowding problem.
When there were rumors of the School District selling off the 5.5 acre of public recreation park the schoolhouse sits on to a private developer, a group of nearby residents got together to form a non-profit organization to save their village park. In 2010, Town voters overwhelmingly agreed to give the property away to the group. A year later the voters freed the group from ever having to pay property taxes on it. The School District had been free of paying taxes on it for over one hundred years.
Ownership of the property was transferred to the preservation society late on 2011. Due to the fact the heating system no longer functions, all work inside was put off until spring. Then on April 7th, a band of volunteers went in and managed to work up a sweat in the cold building, sweeping, scrubbing, and moving a lot of things around. One of the most satisfying tasks was the complete dismantling of a small time-out room, at a time when elementary school seclusion rooms were a hot issue in town. The remains were given to a friend with the skills to build something nicer out of it. The time-out room was not part of the original grade school but added in during the time the building housed the Gateway School from 1984 to 1987, its last 3 years as a school.
As to the future of North School, the dedicated members of the Society hope to restore the building and give it a new life as a community center. But it will no doubt be quite some time before the building will be ready for daily use again. Financial grants must be secured and a lot of work will need to be done to restore the long neglected building and bring it up to current public building codes.
Saturday's Book Sale commences at 9 a.m. and continues until 2 p.m. A variety of nearly 2,000 used books will be offered at bargain prices. Vehicle access and parking is off lower School Street. Enter the building through the rear doors. Bring the kids along, the first grade classroom is set up with many childrens books and there is a playground on site. Also included for sale will be a few spring plants, baked goods, hot coffee and old tyme soda pop. All proceeds go to help maintain and improve the property, including the recreation park which was never stopped being open to the public daily.
Website: http://nsps.awardspace.us
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| The childrens book section inside North School |
I was in there a couple of years ago. It reminded me a lot of what Park Street School looked like before they ruined it with all the "safety" walls in the late '90s. It's about time they made it usable space again. The school system held onto it and only used the building just to store old equipment for WAAAY to long.
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