Former Indiana School Building Converted into Community Center
Morton School, West Lafayette Indiana
The school board completed and opened Morton School in 1930 and it served continuously through 1985. Through the years, the school enjoyed a close relationship with programs at adjacent Purdue University; university faculty taught classes at the school and the school benefited from the resources of a major university in many other ways. Walter Scholer, a prominent Lafayette architect, designed the school building and it is fine example of his local work as well as being a fine example of early twentieth century school design.
Consolidated schools prospered in small towns, where they often served the surrounding township. One such small town was the nascent village of West Lafayette, Indiana. West Lafayette was actually the final name of three separate attempts to establish a settlement on the west banks of the Wabash River, across from the bustling canal town of Lafayette. August Wylie platted 140 lots in 1836 adjacent to a sand bar that was used as a ford across the Wabash into Lafayette. Although settlers bought lots and built structures, constant flooding soon erased the community. Several hundred yards to the west and parallel to the river, the land rises sharply out of the flood plain. This land was much more suited to permanent occupation. Jesse Lutz founded Kingston there in 1855, and the Chaunceys, out-of-town land speculators from Philadelphia, platted the village of Chauncey in 1860. Two other adjacent villages were Jackson and Oakwood. By 1888, the separate villages had united under the name West Lafayette. Residents of West Lafayette were tied to the same economy as Lafayette, river and canal trade at first, then, by the Civil War, railroads and heavy manufacturing. By the 1880s, a covered bridge spanned the Wabash and carried State Street (a main State road) into the heart of the small town and beyond. The single most significant event in the history of West Lafayette happened in 1869, when the General Assembly accepted businessman John Purdue's gift of $150,000 and a campus site to establish a college of agriculture and mechanical arts not far from the town. Purdue University opened its doors in 1874 and gradually became one of two major public institutions of higher learning in the state. West Lafayette became a college town with Purdue being the major employer and focus of the town.
But elementary level education had not gone untended in West Lafayette. The first school in Chauncey was at the corner of North and Salisbury. The township trustees of Wabash Township, Tippecanoe County, built a one-room wood frame schoolhouse in 1855 to replace a log school on that site. With Chauncey's incorporation as a town in 1866, citizens organized a school board and petitioned the township trustees for control of the school. Less than ten years later, the Chauncey town trustees let contracts to build a new multi-room brick school building. A property owner bought the old frame school, moved it to nearby Wiggins Street and remodeled it into a home. The frame school is still a home today, with numerous additions and details from the Queen Anne period. The brick school on North and Salisbury was used continuously until 1891. A remodeling and addition in 1887 increased its capacity.
A fire destroyed the brick school in 1891, and by 1892, the school board built a new ten-room brick school. This 1892 school faced North Street at the corner of North and Salisbury. Enrollment kept pace with the growing community. In the 1860s and 70s, sixty to forty students per year attended the old Morton School, but by 1887, that figure had increased to 250. By the 1920s, enrollment was approaching 400 pupils. West Lafayette petitioned successfully to become a city in 1924.
In May of 1929, the minutes of the West Lafayette School Trustees noted that when old Morton School was built in 1891-2, the population of the town was 4,000, and that the 1929 population was 6,000. Enrollment at old Morton had risen to 416 pupils. Furthermore, the Trustees found that is was "an obvious waste of money" to add to or repair old Morton. School Trustee officials declared that "an emergency exists" as a result of the overcrowded schools of the community. In May of 1929, the West Lafayette School Trustees issued bonds in the amount of $120,000 to fund construction of a new Morton School. The eventual cost was about $198,000, with the difference covered by an unsecured promissory note. The Trustees had hired Walter Scholer to design the school in 1928, and the construction contract was let to A.E. Kemmer Construction Company in August, 1929. The old Morton School was demolished, and, in the months beforehand, the Trustees acquired and cleared the entire block of the few remaining houses. The new Morton School opened on February 14th, 1930, witnessed by a festive grand opening celebration for the community with live music, refreshments, and floral decorations.
Morton School was the most important public elementary school building in the community. It housed the most pupils and became the showcase of the community. The proximity of a major university had a profound and positive effect on Morton School, and on the entire West Lafayette school system. For example, in 1911, Purdue and West Lafayette school officials agreed to let Purdue students teach Home Economics classes to high school students in the community. The town provided the classroom space and equipment, Purdue paid for salaries. Just three years before Morton School was under construction, Purdue and West Lafayette schools inked an agreement allowing Purdue staff and students direct observation and teaching in the West Lafayette public schools. Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Modern Language, and Physics courses were included in the agreement. College students and faculty enjoyed the benefit of first-hand experience, while the local schools enjoyed input from a major university.
In designing Morton School, the Trustees and architect acknowledged a new trend in the Hoosier educational experience: athletics. The growing national trend for physical fitness is reflected in the placing and planning of a gym wing for the new Morton School. More direct was the influence of the basketball craze. "Hoosier Hysteria," the Indiana high school basketball championship, began in 1911 and quickly became a form of popular entertainment in Indiana. Community interest in competition at the elementary level might ensure a high school championship team.
Morton School is the best physical representative of the development of West Lafayette public schools. The former frame schoolhouse, as mentioned, has been extensively remodeled into a two-story house. The Oakwood School, built as a high school but used as an elementary school at one point, has been long since demolished. In the 1930s, W.P.A. funds helped in the construction of a new high school, at Grant and Meridian. This building still stands but has been greatly altered and the school district added a major addition to it in 1997.
Walter Scholer was the architect of the building, and it remains among his finest works. The school was commission number 28-30 for Scholer (30th job, year 1928, according to his Commission Book). The school board minutes never specifically mention Scholer as the architect, but they specify his presence at the receiving of bids meeting, and several newspaper accounts mention Scholer as the architect. Walter Scholer was perhaps the best-known architect in the greater Lafayette area by the 1920s.
Walter Scholer (1890-1972) was one of 13 children born of Swiss immigrants who had settled near Portland, Indiana. His older brother, trained as a draftsman, encouraged Walter to take up architecture. Walter moved to Indianapolis at age 18 and worked in the leading offices of the city, including Rubush & Hunter and Herbert L. Bass. He married Alice Caster of the Portland area in 1911, and attended Columbia University's architecture program in 1913-14. Returning to Indianapolis, Scholer began private practice out of the State Life Building in 1918. The Scholers moved to Lafayette in 1920, and Walter embarked on a long successful career there. He maintained a partnership with Nichol and Hoffman starting in 1920, but in 1925, Scholer took independent control of the firm. The single most impressive commission the firm received was for the design of the Purdue campus plan in 1923, and subsequently, the design of nearly all the campus buildings for the next decades. Prior to 1923, the Daggett and Sons architecture firm dominated all of the Purdue commissions, going back to the turn of the century.
Other fine examples of Scholer's work in the greater Lafayette area include Mars Theater (1921, with Nichols and Hoffman); the Wells Memorial Library (1926); and the U.S. Post Office (1931). Kemmer Construction was the contractor for the Mars Theater; Scholer likely had a good working relationship with them. Scholer's designs were always traditional, solid, well-executed, and practical. Of his educational buildings, of course, many remain at nearby Purdue, but nearly all have been altered in plan. Morton School is perhaps his most intact educational building commission to survive, and it has all of the hallmarks of his work.
Walter Scholer, Jr. followed in his father's footsteps, and the firm became Scholer and Associates in 1945. Walter, Sr. retired from practice in 1968, after more than four decades of work. He was registered architect number 13 under the Indiana Architectural Registration and Licensing Law of 1929. He died in 1972, but the descendent firm of Scholer Corporation still practices in Lafayette and maintains an excellent record of Walter, Sr.'s achievements.
Building Description
Morton School, dedicated February 1930, is a two-story, flat-roofed, brick and limestone building occupying a site bound by Salisbury, Chauncey, North and Columbia Streets in West Lafayette, Indiana. Most of the old portion of West Lafayette occupies a relatively flat land feature, with land sloping away sharply to the east and south toward the Wabash River, and gently rising to the northwest. The immediate site of Morton School is flat. Late 19th and early 20th-century homes and surface parking lots surround the site, but only one block to the south the "village" business district begins, and two to three blocks west is the densely developed Purdue University campus. The east half of the school lot is paved surface parking. The west, north and south edges adjacent to the school have lawn strips, public concrete sidewalks, street trees, and shrubs against the front wall of the building.
The simple yet well-detailed main facade facing Chauncey Street typifies the building. The exterior walls are of dark red face brick laid in a variation of common bond, with five rows of stretcher bond to a row of alternating header-stretcher bond, resting on a limestone foundation. Architect Walter Scholer articulated this facade into an E-shaped format common for early 20th century schools. The end and center stems of the "E" form forward-projecting pavilions. The center pavilion is the main entrance of the building, though, by virtue of increased automobile use, the side and rear entries are for all practical purposes the main entrances. Limestone quoining and shouldered voussoir blocks highlight the triple arcade of segmental, multiple archivolt arches. The new glass and metal main doors approximate the original wood and glass double-leaf doors. Multi-light square paned transoms are above each doorway. The quoin work marks the outside and inside corners of the pavilion all the way to the roof line. A stone tablet engraved with "MORTON SCHOOL" with torches and heraldic shields flanking is centered over the triple arcade. Three windows are centered on the second floor. Each is quoined and has a stone sill. The windows themselves are the original steel sash units with interior opening hopper and awning opening units; these are intact throughout the building. A stone belt course runs across the building at the second-floor window header height, forming a simple cornice. Above the second-floor windows is a stepped parapet, the center and highest step merge with the lower step with graceful stone consoles. Limestone coping completes the parapet. A square stone linenfold bas-relief tablet is centered in the parapet of the center pavilion.
The flanking wings of the main elevation carry the Tudor Revival theme, in a simpler fashion. The windows have simple soldier course headers and plain stone sills, no quoining, but the stone belt course cornice is carried around the entire building. Scholer broke up the sheer mass of the front elevation by dividing it into sections vertically with runs of stone quoin work, making the divisions at six bays on either side of the central pavilion; after the quoin strip is another five bays of fenestration, then come the blank end pavilions. The projecting end pavilions are marked by quoining as well. The flanking section's parapets are flat, lacking the stepped work of the central section.
The north and south elevations are virtually mirror images of one another. Each side elevation is formal and well detailed like the front elevation. An entry section projects forward from each and has a segmental-arched limestone doorway with multiple splayed archivolts, framed by slightly projecting stone quoined buttresses with angled "coping stones" just above the arch springing point. The spandrels are finished in limestone with heraldic shields and linenfold bas-reliefs. The blind tympanum has Art Deco foliate and sunburst bas-relief carving framing a square tablet with inscriptions. The south door carving reads: "AN EDUCATION/IS THE/BIRTHRIGHT OF/EVERY CHILD," the north door reads: "EDUCATION IS/PARAMOUNT/TO GOOD/CITIZENSHIP." Likely, the original doors were wood and glass double-leaf units, now, metal and glass single doors mark each entrance, with a sidelight. Over the arch is a quoined window, and quoining marks the corners of the pavilion. A linenfold tablet is centered in the parapet. Five bays of windows, similar to the front elevation, mark the sections flanking the entry pavilion.
The rear of Morton School also forms an "E," but the central stem containing the gymnasium projects outward considerably farther than the end wings. The quoining, beltcoursing, and stone foundation are carried over to the rear elevation. On the end wings, windows are grouped on the inward half of the wall, leaving the outer half of the wall blank. In the center of each wing is a plain entrance. The recessed wings immediately flanking the gymnasium have five bays of windows. Scholer articulated the gymnasium differently from the rest of the building. Its north and south flanks have two-story high round-arched windows. Closest to the main block of the building is one window, then a plain strip pilaster, then two windows, another pilaster, then two more round-arched windows, then a final pilaster. Each round arch window has brick voussoirs and a stone keystone. Two regular windows (one story high) are placed furthest from the main block on each north and south flank. The end (east) wall of the gymnasium has two regular windows and two plain entrances with stairs, one at each corner. The boiler room stack is centered on the roof line.
The interior of Morton School retains much of its original feeling. Scholer laid out a series of double-loaded corridors running down the center of each floor. The front central foyer has pairs of wooden multi-paned glazed doors leading to the central hallway. The hallway with rooms on either side takes the form a capital "C" with sections extending east at either end of the building. Finishes are simple; terrazzo floors which also form a base, glazed brick wainscoting, plaster walls and ceilings. Classrooms have wooden single-light doors and very plain finishes, with no woodwork or trim around the windows. Several classrooms still have original cabinetry, cloak closets and chalkboards. The administration altered some classrooms through the years by lowering ceilings several inches, adding new light fixtures, or adding new laboratory equipment.
The floor plan is echoed on the second floor. The gymnasium is by far the most dramatic space in Morton School. Multi-paned wooden doors lead to a foyer area, then another set of doors leads to the gym. Scholer used classical and Art Deco motifs in the decorative plasterwork of the gym. The space is a full two stories high, with tall round-arched windows on either long side. Classical pilasters divide the windows. At the far end of the gym is a raised stage with a Tudor-arched proscenium opening. The opening is framed by an architrave molding and linen fold pattern. The spandrels feature Deco sunburst relief patterns and skewed shields. Centered over the arch is a plaster shield with a capital "M." The gym floor was built for basketball play and is wooden. Service rooms are placed backstage.
The school board altered Morton School very little over the years. The superintendent installed new heating units in each room in the late 1940s, and paved the current parking lot. Some rehabilitation work was done on the school in 1969-1970. The superintendent likely installed the dropped ceilings in several rooms at that time. In 1985, the West Lafayette Parks and Recreation Department, using federal Community Development Block Grant funds, purchased the school property from West Lafayette School Board, and in the late 1980s, rehabilitated the school into an elderly and multiple-use community center. Some minor alterations to the basic fabric of the school were done at this time, including the addition of carpeting in some office areas and general repairs. The school stands very much as it was when it was in use as an educational facility.
West facade (1989)
Front facade (1997)
North side (1997)
South side (1997)
North door (1997)
Corner of north and Salisbury Streets (1997)
East side of building (1997)
Wooden exit doors (1997)
