WHS - Town Hall - Normal School - Part 2
by Pete Zizka
10-9-2021
The Normal School was dedicated and opened on May 17, 1895. A newspaper article said, “the Normal School building stands…on a pleasant elevation with a large grove of stately oaks in the rear. (The site) overlooks the picturesque valley of the Willimantic River and its tributaries for miles to the north, west and south.” The building received high praise from all who inspected it. Especially noted was that “the rooms are commodious and amply lighted….There is a convenience in appointments and internal arrangements unexcelled in any other public building of the kind in the state.”  In the meantime, not much at all had been done about the proposed new High School. A July, 1894 editorial in the “Courant” spoke of the necessity of a new town high school and suggested that, “whatever the cause of the (committee’s) inactivity is, it can be remedied by changing the committee. It has come to be a standing joke that the appointment of a committee sounds the death knell of any public matter in Windham.” A crisis of sorts was reached when the new school year started on September 5, 1894 and 137 high school students showed up at a school whose largest room seated only 114. As many as 40 students had to double up in seats in the “recitation rooms” and the laboratory. The next day, the alderman appropriated money for enough seats to accommodate all the students. Now, in the rooms, aisles were reduced from two to one and the teachers had hardly enough room to move. The alderman then requested that the committee appointed in 1888 to resign. A new “special committee” was appointed and by mid-October, had made preliminary investigations into the, “possible location, site, style and cost” not just of the high school but also a new town building. They spent one day examining sites for each building with costs ranging from free donation to several thousand dollars. Among the lots viewed was one offered by A.H. Turner on a site bounded by Summit, Turner and Bellevue streets and Lewiston Avenue. Another lot, owned by Mrs. Holland, was on the northwest corner of Prospect and Chestnut Streets. Other lots considered were on upper High Street and on Prospect Street between Walnut and High Streets. But by October, 1894, some opposition to a new high school was developing. (At town meeting in 1893, Windham’s voters had approved the spending of money and had appointed a committee to begin research into a site for a building of a “town building.)  The opposition’s basic argument was that additions to the First and Second Districts’ schools would solve the problem of school space and town office space. Despite the opposition, at a town meeting in December, 1894, citizens voted to approve a high school building, “at a cost not to exceed $30,000, exclusive of site”. The site eventually chosen was the north end of the plot (southeast corner of Windham and High Streets) which the town had previously deeded to the State for the Normal School. The committee then presented the plan for the high school building which had been drawn up by architect Charles Beardsley of Bridgeport. The proposed building would be 100x80 feet, “with two stories for school purposes, having room for a large hall above and can accommodate 250 pupils”. After the meeting, words of praise were bestowed on the committee which consisted of Frank Larrabee (a Willimantic grocer), Edwin Buck (who owned a grist mill and was a dealer in flour and lumber), Thomas Kelley (an attorney) and Jerome Baldwin (a manufacturer and businessman) who, within two months of being appointed as a committee, had presented to the town, a report which reflected a great deal of research and consideration. But the work was far from over and now, since the town had previously deeded the site to the State, part of the site had to be given back to the town. And so, in February, 1895, about twenty citizens of Willimantic went to the State Capitol to appear before the Committee on Education which was conducting a hearing regarding a resolution authorizing the state to deed a tract of land back to the Town of Windham. (More about the site next week) Today’s unique photo was one of about 125 slides of buildings, businesses, streets and dwellings taken by the Reverend Louis Flocken in 1912 and has been colorized. The slides were used in a presentation to the Methodist Church’s Mens’ Club to show the growth and improvements in the city.
                   





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