New life for an old school?

The Central Building served as Baker High School from 1917 through 1952.

By CHRIS COLLINS
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Designation of a vacant Baker City school building as one of Oregon’s Most Endangered Places should help to focus efforts aimed at bringing the building back to life.

The 94-year-old Central Building at Fifth Street and Washington Avenue was closed by the Baker School District in 2009. It has been declared surplus property and is for sale. While there has been some interest in the building, there are no firm offers are on the table, according to district administrators.

That could change with the designation of the Central Building as one of Oregon’s Most Endangered Places, says Peggy Moretti, executive director of the Historic Preservation League of Oregon, which announced the list last month.

“Historic buildings are an economic asset, not just a cultural asset,” she said. “We’re not advocating for making them a museum. We want to keep them contributing to the community.”

The Central Building is symbolic of many other historic schools around the state that have been closed and left vacant to fall into disrepair, Moretti said.

The Baker City school is more of a treasure than most, however, because it was designed by renowned architect Ellis F. Lawrence, says Ann Mehaffy, Historic Baker City Inc. program director.

Lawrence was the first dean of the University of Oregon School of Architecture for whom Lawrence Hall on the Eugene campus is named.

“I’m just thrilled that it’s going to get the attention it deserves,” Mehaffy said of the former school. “The fact that (Ellis Lawrence) has a building here is amazing. That building is amazing and is really worthy of people’s attention.

“This (designation) is a commitment on everyone’s part to educate the community on the value of the building,” she added. “It is a valuable building and it deserves to be saved.” 

According to a history of the building on the Historic Preservation League of Oregon’s website, Lawrence was one of eight architects who responded to a city-sponsored contest to design a new high school for the community in 1915.

“The school was to be built right in the center of town,” the organization’s website says. “City Hall, the Carnegie Library, and the County  Courthouse were located just down the street, making it an optimal location for another public monument to the new era.”

And like those other public buildings, Central, which served as the district’s high school from 1917 until a new high school was built at the present site in 1952, was constructed of tuff stone mined from the Pleasant Valley area. It is an example of “stripped classical design.”

The website further states that Lawrence came to Oregon in 1906. And when Baker City announced its design contest in 1915, he was one of the state’s top architects.

“He was a pioneer in Arts and Crafts design, first president of the Oregon chapter of the AIA (American Institute of Architects), campus planner and head of the architecture school at the University of Oregon.”

The three-story Central Building was at the heart of a divide in the community when voters turned down a $21 million bond measure in 2007. The bond would have financed a new middle school in north Baker City near the high school.

Supporters of the bond measure pointed to concern for student safety in the old buildings and the lack of accessibility for students with disabilities as the most pressing reasons to build a new school and to close the current middle school campus.

Opponents, on the other hand, favored rehabilitating the buildings and retaining the middle school in the center of the community.

Two years ago, the school board voted to close the Central Building and to move all of the middle school students into the Helen M. Stack Building at Fourth Street and Washington Avenue.

The district scrambled to move the food service program from the middle school’s only cafeteria, previously housed in the Central Building, to the balcony of the gymnasium of the Stack Building. And to find space for art, food and sewing classrooms, which also had been housed in the Central Building.

The building’s third floor has stood empty for nearly 25 years. It could not have been reopened by the school without a complete retrofit, including asbestos abatement, and the addition of fire escapes, a sprinkler system and an elevator, school officials said.

Baker City architect Jim Van Duyn was among those who lobbied for the district to remodel the existing middle school buildings rather than discarding them in favor of new construction.

Van Duyn, a 1978 graduate of the UO School of Architecture, especially appreciated Ellis’s design of the former high school building.

“He was the most prominent architect in Oregon at the time,” Van Duyn, who has a copy of the Central Building plans bearing Lawrence’s name, said during the bond measure campaign. “He was the Granddaddy of Oregon Architecture. It’s interesting that Baker City at that time would attract an architect of such note.”

Timothy Bishop, Baker County Tourism director, agrees that the recognition of the building on Oregon’s Most Endangered Places list will help stimulate public discussion of possible “adaptive reuses” of the building.

Bishop was the first manager of Historic Baker City in the 1990s before moving to Washington where he was the Main Street program manager at Walla Walla and Ellensburg before returning to Baker City a year ago in his new job. In Washington, Bishop served on the board and as board president of the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation.

“Part of the hope and intent of the listing is to spur dialogue,” Bishop said. “To bring recognition and attention to properties in a way that leverages investor interest and community support.”

Moretti said she and her staff will work with the school district and interested community members to help accommodate an adaptive reuse of the Central Building.

“This is intended to be something that is instructive and supportive,” she said. “We look forward to playing a supportive role in keeping that beautiful building in some kind of productive use.”

More information is available at www.HistoricPreservationLeague.org

Other properties listed as Oregon’s Most Endangered Places List:

• Josiah Burnett House, Eagle Creek

• Civic Stadium, Eugene

• Dr. Pierce’s Barn, Cottage Grove

• Egyptian Theater, Coos Bay

• Ermatinger House, Oregon City

• Tillamook Bay Lifesaving Station, Rockaway Beach

• Petersen Rock Garden, Redmond

• Watson-Price Barn, Philomath

• Kirk Whited Farmstead, Redmond