Washington Elementary School undergoes transformation
By: Wendy Wilson
It was once a place filled with children.
Washington Elementary School, built in 1936, is metamorphosing through a new vision.
Walking through the historic place, now under construction with the Village Cooperative, a feeling of melancholy drifts through its former hallways and classrooms.
Old meets new as some walls have been torn down while others remain, like the small strip of drywall covered with colorful, painted handprints. Old Mother Hubbard and her aged brown shoe still gleams from across the room, painted on a wall, and a green dinosaur lounges, reading a book, while construction workers tear, lift and pound around him.
“You could just feel children have been in here. That feeling is gone now,” Hugh Myers said, sales counselor for the Village Cooperative.
Soon, these remaining remnants of many happy years gone by will be covered with sheetrock and paint.
“This building has a history,” Myers said.
Myers described the lockers that used to be in the hallways.
“They took all that out,” he said. “There were old pens and erasers and all that kind of thing and I thought, ‘How many generations of children these little items gone through?’ ”
“So many people have said, ‘We’re glad that you haven’t torn it down. You have maintained the history of the school,’ ” Myers said.
Above the noise of the construction, one could almost hear the patter of young footsteps echoing through the stairway to the second floor of what used to be classrooms, but now are mostly bare boards, wires and pipes.
“We had heard that there were two trees planted in honor of two children that were killed,” Myers said.
The trees are still there, Myers assured. Their strong branches and leaves remain quiet reminders of lives lost when young. The trees now tower over the school.
“Those trees mean something to somebody,” Myers said.
The new residents of the building will be several decades older than its former occupants. The Village Cooperative of Alexandria is for those 55 and older.
New residents at the homes purchase a share in the co-op.
The Village Cooperative allows pets and residents have their own portion of a community garden to tend on the east side of the structure.
A fitness area, community rooms, storage lockers, clubroom, woodworking shop and security are additional amenities.
The co-op offers residents a “no maintenance lifestyle,” according to Myers. A resident coordinator will even arrange to have plants watered and hold mail while residents are away.
The school’s former gymnasium will be the residences’ new heated parking garage.
Myers estimates construction of the homes will be complete by the end of September.
For additional information, Myers may be reached at (320) 760-6343 or by e-mail at alexandria@reeliving.com