Old School Complex in Decorah IA prior to its 2008 demolition

Decorah East Side Elementary and Middle School, Decorah Iowa

Date added: May 12, 2024

Categories:
Iowa
School
Seth Temple

East Side Elementary, looking northwest (1997)

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By March 1896, the Decorah School Board had decided that overcrowding in its existing facility necessitated the construction of either two additional schools in the city or one large central facility which would replace the 1867 structure. A single new building was decided upon, and plans by the Minneapolis firm of Orff & Joralemon were selected from among submissions of four architects in all. When complete, the total cost of the new building came to $33,752 minus $2,370 for the salvage value of the material in the old school. Plumbing and heating alone accounted for $7,785 of the total.

"Orff & Joralemon Architects" was formed in 1893 by Fremont D. Orff and Edgar E. Joralemon. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the firm existed until 1897 when the partners pursued separate careers in Minneapolis and New York state respectively. Both men were also practicing architects before they formed the Orff & Joralemon firm.

Fremont D. Orff (1856-1914) worked in Minneapolis from 1881 to 1914. He joined his brother George W. Orff in a partnership that lasted until 1892 when Fremont Orff and Edgar Joralemon initiated their partnership. George Orff remained in association with the Orff & Joralemon firm and supervised the construction of the Decorah school. He eventually served also as a building inspector in Minneapolis and superintendent of construction for the Minneapolis public school system.

Before the partnership with Joralemon, Fremont Orff designed several notable structures in Minneapolis. These were mostly large individual residential properties. After leaving the partnership with Joralemon in 1897, Fremont Orff worked briefly with Ernest Guilbert, but was on his own again between 1899 and 1914. This period includes several public schools in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Kansas, residential properties, a Carnegie library and several courthouses and city halls in Minnesota.

Edgar E. Joralemon (1858-1937) also began his career in Minneapolis during the early 1880s. He worked on his own and as a draftsman for the L. S. Buffington, F. B. Long, and Orff Brothers firms and in partnership with Charles Ferrin before becoming a partner with Fremont Orff in 1892.

Joralemon also designed several large residential properties in Minneapolis and a number of other structures as well, including a public school in Chaska, Minnesota (1885), a building at the South Dakota Agricultural College in Brookings (1887), plus hotels, tenements, commercial blocks, and other work mainly in Minneapolis. In 1898 he moved to Niagara Falls, New York, where he continued his architectural career until about 1921. The main body of his work from this period comprised schools, 18 of which are currently known, in addition to two libraries and a theater. Except for two schools in Ohio, all this work was done in New York State.

Although George Orff received some architectural education in Boston, both Fremont Orff and Edgar Joralemon were products of an informal apprenticeship system where rendering, design, and engineering skills were learned on the job in the offices of established architects and/or in the building trades.

The 1880s and 1890s was a period of major growth for the architectural profession in Minneapolis as well as elsewhere in the Midwest. Minnesota had been admitted to the Union in 1858, and in 1865 there were only nine architects listed for the state as a whole and one for Minneapolis in a statewide gazetteer and business directory. Ten years later there were four in Minneapolis, but by 1884-85 there are 27 listed in the Minneapolis City Directory.

The period from 1880 to 1900 was one of creative ferment in architecture, and by the time Joralemon introduced the Richardsonian Romanesque to Minnesota with his McNair House (Minneapolis) in 1884-85, this had already become a leading trend elsewhere in the U.S. In the 1880s and 1890s, many younger architects in the Midwest adopted this mode for residential, commercial, and public buildings. Joralemon's school in Chaska (1885, demolished) was perhaps the best early example of this style in Minnesota.

On the whole, however, the Midwestern architectural scene during this period would have to be characterized as eclectic, in that a variety of revival styles were in use along with certain "modern" tendencies which would only later develop into identifiable styles of their own (e.g., the Chicago School, Prairie School, Craftsman, and others). These are the Stick Style, Shingle Style, and the Richardsonian Romanesque. Revival modes persisted, however, and by the mid-1890s a resurgence of Beaux Arts classicism was underway, having been showcased in the "White City" of the World's Columbian Exposition (World's Fair) of 1893 in Chicago. By the time of the First World War, this had become the dominant style, especially for public buildings. All of these tendencies are evident in the work of the Orffs and Joralemon before, during, and after their partnership.

"Orff & Joralemon Architects" saw at least 65 of their designs built, and this was a remarkable productivity considering that the U.S. was in the throes of an economic depression ("Panic") between 1893 and 1898. This may in part account for the large proportion of public buildings by this firm in comparison with their individual work during the 1880s, although a wide range of building types is represented, from city halls and courthouses to commercial blocks, schools, and a variety of residential structures. They also took on commissions from outside the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul and in other Midwestern states during the years of their partnership.

Public schools represent a major portion of their output for the period of their partnership, and the Decorah school is one of nine built which were located in small to medium-sized towns and cities in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. A second of these was also in Iowa, at Waterloo (1897, demolished), and the number does not include the several buildings from 1893 in Fargo, North Dakota at the State Agricultural College. Decorah's East Side Elementary School is in most respects the outstanding example of any of their school designs that were built. Aside from the Chaska school and a science hall for the South Dakota Agricultural College in Brookings (Joralemon and Ferrin, 1887), there is no record of any school designs by either the Orff brothers or Joralemon before their partnership. The Decorah school was a major work also in terms of its cost of construction, being exceeded only by their Waseca County (Minnesota) courthouse and two commercial blocks in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

In addition to the Decorah and Waterloo schools, Orff & Joralemon designed three other buildings in Iowa: a Congregational church in Decorah (1895), a Baptist church (1895), and a dwelling (1896), both in Mason City.

The Orff & Joralemon schools range in size from the four-room 30 by 45-foot wood frame building in Stanley, Wisconsin (1896, no longer extant) to their school in Decorah which, with its 20-plus rooms, is the largest school property designed by these architects. Other schools which are still extant though renovated and modified are the 80 by 100 foot twelve-room building in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, and the eight-room building in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. With the exception of the Stanley, Wisconsin property, all of Orff & Joralemon's school buildings were two- and three-story buildings in brick and stone.

In the floor plans and in the general layout of the interior space, Decorah's school generally reflects many typical features of the "better" school designs from its period; multiple entrances and wide hallways for good circulation, and maximum daylight in each room but from one side only.

According to the architect and school historian Lawrence Perkins, the best designs for the larger schools in the growing urban centers across the U.S. were initially done for private high schools ("academies"), and these influenced public school design by the 1880s and into the 1890s. Examples cited by Perkins for the last years of the 19^th Century and what is illustrated in the first compilations published of the newest 20th-century designs are very similar in plan to Orff & Joralemon's plan for Decorah.

Lighting in schools from this period was exclusively natural, since electrification was spotty and the schools were not intended to be used at night. Light was admitted on one, two or three sides depending on the size of the school.

In Decorah the classrooms and fenestration are arranged so that light comes in from one side only. This reflects the idea that "cross-lighting" was bad for eyesight and that daylight should come in from the students' left side only, which had been proposed as early as 1871 but was not widely incorporated until after 1900. It was assumed that every student would be writing with the right hand.

Central heating and ventilation was still a new idea at the time, as reflected in the bids which were received for construction of East Side, in that one firm proposed to install eight separate furnaces. The Board opted for a central steam heat and steam-powered ventilation system with the new "Johnson System" of temperature regulation for each room. This non-electrical thermostatic control system became standard in schools by 1910. Further development of technical improvements in school facilities followed electrification, which was available in Decorah only after the East Side School was built.

In its horizontal massing, proportions and detailing, the East Side School is distinctly modern when compared with other schools by Orff & Joralemon as well as in the larger context of school design from this period. The Richardsonian Romanesque was being used in school design alone or with other stylistic elements in the work of many architects during the 1880s and 1890s. Romanesque elements in the Decorah school are limited to the belfries, entrance portals, and rock-face treatment of the basement level.

The north and south entrance bays extend a full two stories and project out from the main body, as does a portion of the building to the rear. The bell towers are set out ahead of the main wall surface, and all these factors destroy any sense of a box-like enclosure, which was the most typical feature of school designs until this period. Orff & Joralemon's other school designs, while they may include some of these features, do not embody this overall modern appearance, and some of them include neo-Gothic and Beaux Arts stylistic elements.

As F.D. Orff and E.E. Joralemon pursued their separate careers after 1897, school commissions became increasingly important to both. The period of experimentation with new forms was over, however, and their post-1897 schools are either minor re-workings of the plans from 1893-97 or predominantly in the neo-Gothic, Renaissance or Beaux Arts modes. This is especially evident in Joralemon's work until 1920, when he designed an elementary school in Dunkirk, New York which set a new direction in school design for most of the U.S. This is most likely his last completed building, and its single-story layout and open plan around a courtyard were unusual at the time except, perhaps, in California.

It is also true, however, that despite the general trend toward revival or "period" styles which lasted into the 1940s, a number of school buildings with many of the same modern features as in Decorah's East Side continued to be built into the 1920s. In the 1930s, "modern" for schools became the Streamline Moderne, but it too shared the field with a range of revival styles.

The modern features of the East Side School later became key elements in the Prairie School, Bungalow and Craftsman styles. Certain designs of Frank Lloyd Wright and others from the 1890s also contain some of these stylistic elements.

The Decorah East Side School is the outstanding school design by Orff & Joralemon and as such it is a major work by a firm which produced many designs for a wide diversity of property types throughout the Upper Midwest. While the names of Peabody and Stearns, L. S. Buffington, Cass Gilbert, and others may be better known today as the leading figures of this period, Orff & Joralemon are fully as representative in the large quantity, high quality, and wide range of their output.

According to James Meiborg, the 1920s in Iowa was the "age of schools and schoolhouses," as the need for new construction was great after World War I. This period also saw the development of school design specialists, including William Iter, who was based in St. Louis and whose ideas were important throughout the Midwest. Ittner advocated "open" floor plans in contrast to the earlier "box" configuration.

The open plan, whether laid out around an open court or as projecting wings, featured a "single-loaded" corridor with classrooms on one side only, to allow for maximum light and air circulation. Ittner also adopted the centrally placed, combination auditorium/gymnasium idea and emphasized the importance of linking elementary and high school facilities in order to achieve efficiencies of scale in smaller school districts. He was the first to propose specialized classroom facilities for lessons in manual training, domestic science, or other subjects. Iter preferred the Tudor Gothic and other European revival styles in his school designs, and in particular his design for the McClain High School in Greenfield, Ohio (1923) has many features in common with the Decorah Middle School, in particular the projecting entrance portals decorated with English Medieval style stone trim.

The Middle School classrooms are all on the outside of a corridor which flanks the auditorium/gymnasium (in the 1922 phase), and the original plans and contemporary newspaper reports indicate specialized classroom designations: "Manual Training Suite," "Commercial Department, including typewriting room, bookkeeping and office rooms," and so on.

Another important factor behind new school construction in the 1920s was fire prevention. This was accomplished by using fireproof materials and by sealing off entrance and circulation stairways and by limiting the number of floors in building elevations. All these features are embodied in Temple and Burrows' 1922 design for the Decorah school.

Seth J. Temple and Parke T. Burrows formed a partnership in 1910 which lasted until 1925. Both men had careers before and after their partnership, and most of their work was done in Davenport, including the local junior and senior high schools. They also designed high schools in Monmouth, Illinois and Burlington, Iowa.

The Public Works Administration (PWA), also known as the Federal Emergency Public Works Administration, was one of the several "alphabet agencies" put into operation between 1933 and 1939 by the Roosevelt administration to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression. The PWA supported the construction of public buildings of all types, but it was especially important in its funding of school projects. The PWA philosophy was to award grants for 30 to 45% of the total project costs and, in some cases, loans to cover the remainder. In most cases, as in Decorah, these projects were designed by local architects and bid out to local contractors for completion, using local labor exclusively as required by Federal law.

School buildings were built all across the U.S. with PWA aid, and by the end of 1938 nearly 2,000 projects were complete or underway. Additional projects were funded in 1939 with construction going on into 1940, but this later phase of the period has not been studied.

In Iowa, 90 of the 928 school districts had received PWA assistance by the end of 1938 for buildings that included athletic facilities. Many of these were gymnasia or gymnasium/auditorium combinations. In all, there were 137 school buildings constructed in Iowa, and this represents a little more than one-third of the total number (330) of PWA projects completed in the state through 1938.

Winneshiek, Allamakee, Howard, and Clayton counties all had school projects funded by the PWA. Decorah (the Middle School and West Side School), Ridgeway and Calmar (all in Winneshiek County) constructed new schools or additions to existing buildings, as did Waukon, Postville, Cresco and Elkader. With the exception of the high school in Elkader, all these projects were designed by Charles Altfillisch.

Charles Altfillisch was born in Bellevue, Iowa and educated at the University of Iowa and the Carnegie-Mellon Institute. He came to Decorah in 1921 where he remained until his retirement in 1974. His work through 1950 alone encompasses a large number of commissions in a wide variety of building types, mainly located in Allamakee, Winneshiek, Howard and Fayette counties, but with isolated examples elsewhere in Iowa and in southeast Minnesota. A project file of his work exists, but no comprehensive survey of the existing work has been done.

When the local school authorities hired him to expand the high school in 1934, Altfillisch was already very familiar with the structure, since he had been retained as supervising architect by Temple and Burrows for the execution of their plans in 1922. His own work here from 1934 illustrates certain typical features of his approach to design. At the most general level, Altfillisch's work is low-key, modest and subtle in scale, the choice of materials, and in detailing. In his additions to the 1922 edifice, the architect left almost no trace of his own hand, and the only clue to the building's construction history is the presence of both 1922 and 1935 in stone on the facade. He enlarged the building by adding a wing on the west end and in the process added an entrance portal which is identical to the two originals. An inscription between these portals read "High School 1922," and in 1935 "1935 Decorah" was added on the new segment so that it now reads "1935 Decorah High School 1922."

Few changes were made to the 1922 segment on the interior either, so that the facility has a unified 1920s character attained by matching the new construction to the old. This is rather unusual in projects of this kind by any architect, but it relates to the qualities just mentioned as typical for Altfillisch.

The gymnasium is Altfillisch's design throughout, but the entrance treatment echoes the 1922 portals in the use of a segmented arch. Details here and elsewhere also suggest the abstract tendencies typical of the Streamline Moderne style. On the interior, the truss roof support system is designed with an economy of means that gives the whole an unexpected lightweight appearance. The Decorah Middle School gymnasium appears to be the only large structure of its type by this architect still extant and with some integrity from the 1930s. As noted above, the windows have been replaced with brick infill and a multi-purpose room was attached to the northwest corner in 1974. A handicapped accessibility ramp was added along the east side, but the entrance portal is essentially original except for some poorly executed repair of the roof and mortar joints. Altfillisch also designed Decorah's West Side Elementary School, which was built in 1939 under PWA auspices.

When Decorah opened the doors on its "new high school" in the fall of 1935, the school board ran a large advertisement in the Journal soliciting the "Young People of Surrounding (sic) Territory Desiring a First Class High School Education." It was the only high school in the county and offered training for prospective country school teachers, up-to-date agricultural and commercial training, plus an array of extracurricular activities including sports, music and dramatics, all of which being quite typical of high school curricula of the time. The combined facility now known as the Decorah East Side Elementary and Middle School, plus the primary school in the city's west side, served the community's public education needs from 1897 to 1964, when additional high school and primary facilities were built at a different location north of the commercial downtown.

Site Description

The Decorah East Side Elementary and Middle School is a facility comprising two buildings linked by a narrow corridor. One of these is an elementary school which was built in 1896 and the other is the Decorah Middle School which was first built in 1922 as Decorah's high school. The heating plant for both buildings is in the basement of the elementary school, and a large coal bunker, lying mostly below grade and currently not in use, was built onto the west side of the elementary school in 1922. In 1935 the middle school was enlarged with the addition of a classroom wing to the west and a new gymnasium on the north side, and in 1974 an addition (72' by 40') was built at the north end of the gymnasium. The combined facility, measuring c. 343' by 312' overall, is located on a large lot in a long-time residential district less than three blocks south of the city's commercial downtown.

The Decorah East Side Elementary School is a three-story (two floors over a raised basement) brick and stone building located at the corner of Vernon and Winnebago Streets in Decorah, Iowa. The school measures 90' by 154' and contains 20 classrooms. The Romanesque-influenced design by the Minneapolis firm of Orff & Joralemon has seen only minor changes to its original fabric in the 100 years since its construction.

This building was Decorah's only public school at the time of its construction, and it replaced an 1867 school building at the same location which was demolished to make way for the current building. Construction began in July 1896, and the school was occupied on January 25^th, 1897. The building is constructed with exterior and interior bearing walls of brick over basement walls and footings of local limestone faced with Kasota (Minnesota) "Pink Stone." This limestone material (Dolomite) is also used for window ledges, in the entrances, and for other exterior trim. Cast iron and/or steel beams and columns were also deployed at various locations in the building, for example in the tower walls.

The exterior (face) brick is Menomonie "Fire Marked" pressed brick, which together with the Kasota stone and "adamant" plaster on the interior were all more expensive but also more durable and more attractive than other, cheaper alternatives.

There is an entrance on each of the building's four sides, and two of these lead to the basement level and the first floor. The other two lead to the first floor only. The entrance portals are framed with recessed semicircular arches, and string course in brick are applied to denote the second floor level on the exterior. The second floor window openings are headed with low relief flat arches, also in brick.

The window sashes are pine, with oak sills, on stone ledges throughout, and vary from 6/2 in the first and second floor classrooms to 3/2 in the basement, 3/1 in the attic and 2/1 in the towers. This sash is all movable with weather stripping and sash weights. Provision was made for attaching screens and storm windows as well. The windows and eaves, including the exposed rafters, were originally a reddish brown but are now painted white. The windows are in remarkably good condition considering that storm windows have not been used for many years.

The towers with their Romanesque arcades in the belfry (which never had bells installed) are accessible from the attic. Stone panels reading "Public" and "School" are set into the towers below the belfries. The towers are capped with steep pyramidal roofs with flared eaves which terminate in metal finials and a flagpole on the southernmost tower. A narrow loggia with a short balcony is located between the towers, and this is accessible from the classrooms on either side. There were three dormers between the towers, but these were removed at an unknown date.

Other notable exterior features are the low-pitch, hipped roof of timber construction and exposed rafters. There are two ventilation towers on the west side of the roof which, with their lower-pitch flared roof structures and metal finials, echo the larger towers flanking the main entrance.

The attic is reached by a staircase at the south end of the second floor and is illuminated by windows at the north and south ends and in each tower. The ventilation shafts are connected to the original duct system, which has not been in operation since sometime in the 1980s.

Descending to the basement level, we find the space arranged with four classrooms along the east side with one classroom on the west side flanked by the girls washroom. Next to this are the ventilation equipment, storage space, and a maintenance room. The large enclosed fan was originally powered by a 10 HP steam engine which was replaced with an electric motor. A boys washroom is located in the northwest corner.

On the first floor there are eight classrooms and the Principal's office, which was originally a lunch room. There are two staircases leading to the second floor and these, like the others, are wood covered with linoleum, with the original banisters, spindlework and newels still in place.

The second floor contains a total of eight classrooms, in addition to a library, computer room, locker room, and a small office space. This floor includes what was the high school department, consisting of the largest single room in the building (31 by 59 feet) flanked by smaller rooms on either side. This room measures 16 feet floor to ceiling, and this extra height accounts for the extra row of windows, the higher roof profile, and a projecting bay on the west side of the building. This room is now divided in two, and the rooms on the east side of the second floor and on the first floor are 11 feet high, with the basement rooms rising 10 feet.

The classrooms throughout have oak veneer doors with transoms and oak trim, which is stained a dark brown and varnished. Several of the classrooms have original built-in storage cupboards. Steel lockers have replaced the "cloak rooms" on the first and second floors, which were wood enclosures, open top and bottom, along each side of the hall. The floors on the two upper stories are surfaced with two-inch hard maple except for the first-floor hall, which is now covered with terrazzo.

In 1916 most of the ceiling surface in the building was covered with pressed metal in a variety of decorative patterns. Fire escapes and exit doors were installed from the second floor at an unknown date.

There is some unevenness in the floors, the stairs are badly worn, and some of the exterior brick needs re-mortaring or pointing, but for the most part, this building is in good overall condition.

The Decorah Middle School is located directly west of East Side Elementary, and it is an enlargement of the original building designed in 1922 by the Davenport, Iowa firm of Temple and Burrows. The 1922 structure, Decorah's first high school, was connected by a corridor to East Side at the time of its construction. It was rectangular in plan, three stories high, and measured c. 140' by 109'. In 1934 the Decorah architect Charles Altfillisch was commissioned to enlarge the school by extending it to the west and adding a north-south wing on the west side, in addition to replacing the original gymnasium with a larger facility. The extension and wing are identical in style, materials and plan to the 1922 structure, so now the building has three entrance portals rather than the original two.

The 1922 phase included a combination auditorium/gymnasium which was divided by a set of folding doors. When the larger gymnasium was added, the stage portion of the auditorium was enlarged, and a permanent wall now separates the facilities. It would appear that few if any other substantive changes were made to the 1922 segment of the building when it was enlarged in 1934-35.

The current property is a three-storied structure laid out on three sides of an auditorium/gymnasium. The classrooms are arranged on the outside of a corridor which flanks the central space. According to blueprints on file and contemporary newspaper reports, these classrooms were intended for specialized use; e.g., manual training, stenography, physics, chemistry, home economics, etc. The classroom doors and other woodwork are dark stained wood, and the entrance doors in the stairwells are steel, for fire protection. The construction throughout (walls, floors, ceilings) is reinforced concrete, except for the roof of the 1934-35 wing which is concrete poured on "Truscan" steel joists. The exterior is clad with dark brick and carved limestone trim.

The gymnasium is the only completely new segment of this property designed by Altfillisch. It is distinct stylistically, while the exterior fabric is the same in material as the rest, brick with limestone trim. The gymnasium is covered with a steel truss roof support system, and there was originally a large expanse of windows on both of its long sides and small windows on the end. These were bricked in at an unknown date, as were several small windows at the ground floor level which are not visible from the street. There have been no other significant changes to the gymnasium since it was completed except for the attachment of a 72' by 40' single-story addition on the northwest corner in 1974.

The only major change to the main body of the school was to replace the original wood-framed windows with fenestration combining dark brown opaque panels over clear glass in metal frames. The interior woodwork throughout and the lighting fixtures in the 1922 auditorium appear to be original.

There is a general playground north of the elementary school and an athletic practice field west of the middle school complex.