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“Sentimental
Adj.
of or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia.
“Yup, that about sums it up. The last bell has rung, the last attendance has been taken, and the last student got their lunch. The last teacher vs. staff flag football game happened. The last recess occurred. It’s been a great run, Longfellow. #wawmproud”
That was the final post on the now-inactive Facebook page for Longfellow Elementary School, 2211 S. 60th St., in West Allis. At the end of the last school year, in June, Longfellow merged with Jefferson and Pershing Elementary Schools, ending a more than 100-year run for the school.
The move was part of a plan, approved by the West Allis-West Milwaukee School Board a year earlier, that also merged Madison Elementary with Walker Elementary, and Lane Intermediate with Frank Lloyd Wright Intermediate.
“What precipitated all of this, is that at one point we had over 12,000 students,” explains Steven Eichman, the district's manager of facilities, “and now we have just over 7,000.
"Before we consolidated these schools, we were operating the same square footage as we had when we had 5,000 more students. Programmatically and financially it makes no sense to keep doing that. It's not efficient.”
WAWM School District hired a consulting firm to make long-range demographic and enrollment projections as part of a district-wide facilities and maintenance plan, Eichman says.
“They did, I think it was 25 years of projection of enrollment and what that looks like,” he recalls. “They looked at some of the developments that are going on and all of that.
"People say, well, ‘we have a lot of apartment buildings, so there's a lot of families,’ and all that, but if they're predominantly one- and two-bedroom (units), that's not conducive for families and children, typically. And you don't see a lot of three-bedrooms in those (new buildings).”
At the moment, the school board is discussing a proposal for the WAWM Recreation and Community Services Department to lease and remodel the Lane building, and the Madison building is still serving the district, as home to the staff of the district’s online charter school, as well as its Shared Journeys program for school-aged mothers.
But there’s apparently no feeling that Longfellow will be needed in the future and so the district issued a request for proposals (RFP) for the sale and redevelopment of the 2.45-acre site and, hopefully, the Lindl & Schutte-designed building, erected in 1927, with additions in 1928, 1956 and 1999.
Last week, the school board reached a tentative agreement with a developer on one of the two proposals that was received and that plan includes keeping and renovating the old building into apartments.
The proposal by Illinois-based developer Housing For All, calls for creating 14 apartments in the existing building and then adding two more two-story buildings to the site.
One of them, along Grant Street, would also have 14 units and the other, along 61st Street, would have 22, for a total of 50, which would be a mix of affordable and market-rate apartments, according to Aaron Norris, who is the district's assistant superintendent.
Sale price for the building is $1.25 million, which is based on $25,000 each for 50 units, with a stipulation that the number of units not fall below 48 (for a total sale price of $1.2 million).
The deal also includes a minimum budget of $150,000 for a playground on the site that will remain accessible to the public.
"Obviously, pending Common Council approval and all that," says Norris. The district's board, too, still must approve the "definitive sale price and purchase agreement."
"The agency is working with the City of West Allis plan commission to have the site rezoned, and then they'll go through the process to apply for tax credits and things like that."
Even before agreement was reached with Housing For All, the district was working with a Certified Historic Consultant to get the property listed to the National Register of Historic Places. Such designation is typically sought in cases when a developer hopes to secure historic tax credits to help finance a project.
"This organization has done this before," says Norris of Housing For All. "They're currently working on a project in Aurora, Illinois transforming a school."
Longfellow School dates to 1920 when a small two-classroom barracks building was erected at the site, which had been purchased from George L. Kappel. That structure was replaced in 1927 by the $45,000 nine-room brick Collegiate Gothic building that’s on the site now.
During that decade West Allis saw something of a district building boom as 19th century schoolhouses were replaced or expanded as population exploded.
“West Allis was, according to the 1930 the census, the second fastest growing community in the U.S.,” wrote Dr. Leonard A. Szudy and Robert Thompto in “100 Years of the West Allis and West Milwaukee Schools,” noting that the population grew 152.2 percent over a decade earlier.
Longfellow was part of this movement and its building is very similar to others built or expanded at the time, including Roosevelt (1921, demolished), Franklin (1923), McKinley (1925, now razed) and Wilson (1929). Jefferson (1922), was also part of this group and was also similar, though with projecting wings.
A $20,000 addition was almost immediately made to the north end of the building and in September 1957, an addition with a gym, kitchen, office, fieldhouse and two classrooms, designed by the same architects, opened. A small addition was made to this section of the building in 1999, bringing the total square footage to 36,860.
The school’s recent enrollment had been about 235 students from Pre-K to 5th grade.
The Wisconsin Historical Society’s Architectural Inventory has a good description of the exterior:
“Longfellow School rises three stories in height and is faced with brick. A two-story wing extends from the south end of the building and features canted corners. Two entrances are located along the primary facade, each of which is set within a gabled stone surround. Windows occupy the remaining upper level of the slightly projecting, entryway bays which terminate as a gabled parapet and are trimmed with stone-capped piers.
“The majority of the windows are set in bands and are rectangular; however, a pair of round-arched examples are located along the uppermost level at both the north and south ends. A stone inset inscribed with "LONGFELLOW SCHOOL" rests along the cornice/parapet. Narrow stone trim runs along the top of the raised basement level, as well as immediately above the second-floor windows. Window openings remain intact; however, original windows have been covered ... by translucent material.”
That description neglected to mention the small terra cotta units that adorn the entrances, just above the doors.
I was lucky enough to get a look inside and the building has nice terrazzo floors in the 1920s sections and impressive built-ins and woodwork throughout, including framing around chalkboards – some of which have multi-level boards with panels that slide along a track. There are quite nice chalk rails, too (I know: geek alert!).
In one office space, a former bathroom was converted to a closet and then glammed up a bit with wallpaper and a fancy hanging globe light fixture.
Interestingly, the school is on a single-loaded corridor plan, with classrooms running along just one side of the hallway. That’s why when you’re out back on the playground there are very few windows, which struck me immediately because it’s so rare in a schoolhouse.
The centerpiece of the building is clearly the large kindergarten room on the south end of the building.
The south wall of this space is all windows. On the west wall is one of those multi-level chalkboards and red- and cream-colored checkerboard tiles that look like perhaps they were added at the time of the 1956 addition are dotted with images of frogs, fish, musical notes, sunflowers, birds and, inexplicably, a scary clown.
On the north wall is a gorgeous brick (non-working) fireplace with inlaid terra cotta units and panels that depict Old King Cole, his pipe and his bowl, as well as floral motifs.
According to local expert Ben Tyjeski, these were made by Batchelder Tile Company.
On either side of the fireplace are two recesses.
The one on the left has the entrance to the room in the center, flanked by built-in bookcases with glass doors, and the one on the right has two built-in benches with seats that flap up to reveal storage spaces.
In the center of each recess is a matching terra cotta tile depicting a tree in a landscape.
Though the windows look from the outside like they’ve been replaced with opaque glass, they are in fact only covered on the inside with the translucent plastic, which appears to be fairly easily removed.
Climbing a ladder to the roof, we get a nice view out toward the Downtown Milwaukee skyline, but we can also see how large the site is, and although the RFP suggests that some of it be maintained as green space, there appears to be plenty of space for a developer to convert the school into apartments and augment it with an addition or a separate building (or two).
From the beginning of the RFP process, the district made an effort to ensure the building had a future, as evidenced by the effort to secure historic designation and by this statement in the RFP it issued:
“The development project should consider the historical significance of the property as well as the historical significance of the surrounding properties. The development project should seek to restore, in conformance with applicable preservation standards, the architectural elements of the property.”
Norris says the plan is one that fits nicely with what the community has sought and with the boom in West Allis in recent years.
"We had a community session last spring, and they really didn't want it to become commercialized there," he says. "That area ... is pretty residential and the community felt like that was a better option for them.
""It's exciting. The amount of change I've seen happen in West Allis over the past decade, it's crazy. There's a massive infrastructural change, with downtown and Mayor (Dan) Devine, what he's doing. I feel like this fits into what what they're trying to do with the city. It's a good thing for everybody, in my opinion."
Devine also has expressed interest in seeing residential development at the site.
“I saw a video about three high school friends, I want to say it was in Pennsylvania, that went back to renovate an old school, and they turned it into some incredibly cool housing with a big, not formal, but fancy lobby, utilizing all the existing bones," he told me the day we visited the empty school.
"So that's appealing to me. It seems like housing is a natural transition.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He can be heard weekly on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories.
