Abandoned school in Pennsylvania

Oakdale Public School, Oakdale Pennsylvania

Date added: April 07, 2023 Categories: Pennsylvania School

Initially settled as a farming community at the intersection of two creeks, Oakdale subsequently grew into a prosperous industrial and mining town as the result of several influences: the establishment of Thompson's Grist Mill, in 1849; the completion of the Panhandle Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1865; the beginning of speculative real estate development by C. Hanson Love, a land developer from Pittsburgh, in 1866; and the fervor of "The Oil Excitement" and coal mining, attracting drilling outfits and oil and coal companies to the town, beginning in the 1870s. The railroad made the area accessible for development, and the natural resources made it attractive. Among the industrial concerns that settled in Oakdale were Carnegie Coal Company and Breuning Cork Company.

By 1892, the Borough was incorporated, and was home to 1,200 inhabitants. The years that followed, until the turn of the century, saw continued growth and expansion, with connections to Pittsburgh maintained through the railroad and an emerging industrial base.

The Oakdale Public School was built in 1894, during the Borough's peak decade of development. It stands today as the only remaining public or institutional building that dates to the Borough's boom years. The community's first school, with one room, had been built in 1869; a second room was added in 1886. This early school served the basic "primer" or "grammar" school level of grades one through six or eight.

In 1870, C. Hanson Love opened the Oakdale Classical and Normal Academy, an elite co-educational boarding school which provided further education to regional students who had completed grammar school.

With the introduction of the Oakdale Public School in 1894, however, the Oakdale Academy soon lost favor, and closed in 1898. The Oakdale Public School initially served grades one through eight, and it continued as the Borough's only elementary school until its closing in 1972. At an undetermined date after the construction of the Oakdale Public School, a two year high school was operated in three rooms of a house on Highland Avenue. The students then traveled to McDonald to finish high school. The house was demolished for construction of the new four-year high school on Highland Avenue in 1926. That school has also been demolished.

Throughout the southwestern Allegheny County/northern Washington County region of which Oakdale is a part, the educational system was apparently being studied and expanded during the economic boom period of the 1890s. Academies and high schools were being opened in a number of regional towns, such as Imperial, Hickory, Burgettstown, McDonald, and Noblestown. With the passage in 1893 of a new state text book law requiring schools to provide books to their students, and an accompanying appropriation of $5 million, Many communities initiated curricular assessments and extensive book purchase programs. While Oakdale School Board records for the period of the 1890s do not survive and the specific book acquisitions and curricular strategies in Oakdale have not been documented, the local papers that served Oakdale devoted attention to these activities in other nearby communities. Educational trends in these communities are possibly representative of similar changes in Oakdale. The full exam for graduation from the nearby McDonald Public School, for example, published in the McDonald Outlook on April 1, 1893, included Reading, Arithmetic, History, Spelling, Geography, and Physiology. Later that year, The Washington County Institute of Teachers held its 43^rd annual meeting in November 1893 to discuss such issues as: "School Laws Passed by Our Last Legislature;" "Selection and Salary of Teachers;" "How Shall we Successfully Carry Out the Mandates of the New Text-book Law;" "What Kind of School Houses Shall we Build, and How Shall we Take Care of Them?". While both the McDonald curriculum and the Teachers Institute would technically have excluded Allegheny County teachers (and therefore Oakdale), they would presumably have influenced Oakdale as part of their local cultural sphere of influence. In later years for which Oakdale School Board minutes are available,ca. 1922-1966, the board's decisions focused on hiring, firing, and salaries of teachers, as well as facilities issues.

In addition to its role in elementary education, the Oakdale Public School served as a community meeting place for a variety of activities, such as the Oakdale School Board, Vacation Bible School, and Polish language classes. Its role was particularly strong until construction of the new high school in 1926.

The Oakdale Public School and the Oakdale High School remained the two public schools in the Borough for half a century. Oakdale was also the site of the Boys' Industrial Home, a private reform institution founded in 1901 that was housed in the former Academy Building. Both the High School and the Academy are now gone. The Boys' Home has been Significantly altered for use as apartments.

1949 saw the merger of the school districts of Findlay and North Fayette Townships and Oakdale Borough into "West Allegheny Joint Schools." Under the terms of the merger, provided for under the School Code of 1949, the districts would pool their facilities and share maintenance issues under a joint board. The Oakdale Public School then became known as Oakdale No. 1 and functioned as an elementary school which in 1950 accommodated 161 of the new joint district's 1,182 elementary school students. It was closed in 1972 and auctioned to a private owner, who ultimately defaulted on taxes, leading to the current owner's purchase at Sheriff's Sale in 1994. The building has stood vacant since its 1972 closing, despite attempts to renovate and reuse it. Current plans call for a certified historic multi-unit residential rehabilitation.

Originally planned to include six rooms and to cost $12,000 (financed through a bond issue), the project drew fourteen bids ranging from $19,000 to $24,000. In September 1894, the school board awarded the contract to J. M. Andrews for $17,948. According to a news item at the time, the only alterations to the original plan were the substitution of pine for hemlock in the roof and a change in the plastering.

The architect for the Oakdale Public School was J. E. Allison of Pittsburgh and Allegheny. He was listed in the 1891 Pittsburgh and Allegheny City Directory as a draughtsman, but by 1892 as an architect. Allison apparently maintained his practice in Pittsburgh over the next twenty years, occupying four successive office locations and joining with at least two different partners: O. M. Topp from ca.1902-1903, D. C. Allison from ca.1905-1909, and possibly Charles Allison at an undetermined time. By 1910, the firm was no longer listed in the Directory. Other Allison (or Aliison and Allison) commissions identified to date include the Citizens National Bank in Vandergrift, PA; a high school in Scottsdale, PA; campus buildings for the University of Pittsburgh and for the University of California in Los Angeles; the First National Bank in McDonald; and numerous churches and homes in the Pittsburgh area.

Building Description

Sited on a knoll and set back from State Street in a residential area, the 1894 Oakdale Public School maintains a prominent presence in Oakdale Borough, 15 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. Its roughly trapezoidal lot is terraced above State Street, overlooking the railroad and the creek, just two blocks east of the Borough's main commercial street, Noblestown Road. The Romanesque/Classical Revival, brick building, topped by a hip roof with a central chimney and a central tower on the southeast (front) facade, measures 71'- 2" x 78'-6" overall and consists of a large block with a projecting central entrance pavilion on the front and a matching, slightly smaller block (ca.1895-1905) to the rear (northwest). Although it is in poor condition, its integrity remains good. A stone retaining wall parallels the State Street sidewalk. No other buildings occupy the site.

The design of the Oakdale School is a modest interpretation of a transitional Romanesque/Classical Revival style. The structure rises two and a half stories above a raised basement. The orange brick walls are enhanced with red brick and stone trim. A heavy stone water table runs the perimeter of the building above the basement level, which is laid up in ashlar on the front block and in a mixture of ashlar and uncut stone on the rear block. The tower, once crowned by a pyramidal roof which has been removed, features an open belfry with arched windows in a Palladian configuration. A box cornice projects over brick sawtooth ornament and dentils. At the cornice level on the central tower bay is a datestone which reads, "Anno Domino Public School MDCCCICIV." The pyramidal roof was removed at an undetermined date.

All four elevations of the building are symmetrical. The windows, topped with red brick arches and rock-faced keystones, are arranged in single and double configurations on the southeast (front) facade, and in single and triple configurations on the other three elevations; their arches share brick spring courses, but their stone sills are separate. The windows were boarded up sometime after the school closed in 1972. The central entrance in the tower bay on the southeast consists of the original double wood-paneled doors recessed behind a broad arch with brick detailing and a stone keystone to match the windows; it is reached by stone steps with flanking stone walls. A secondary doorway with an arched transom is located in the central bay on the northwest (rear) facade. The heavy stone work and arched windows suggest the influence of the Romanesque style, while the use of keystones, dentils and a Palladian motif look forward to subsequent Classical trends that came to dominate public school architecture after the turn of the century.

The addition, believed to have been added within a short time after the initial construction (ca.1895-1905), is an exact match of the original in materials and detailing.

The plan of the basement, first, and second floors of the building consists of a central hall with four major rooms on each floor, divided into sets of two by the hall. The front two rooms both measure roughly 35'6" x 27'4"; the rear two rooms measure 34'6" x 29'10" and 28'10" x 27'3". Each of the rooms has two structural iron columns set on a northwest-southeast axis which bisects the room. Coat rooms are attached to the classrooms on their southeast sides. The original building had just one room on either side; the rear (northwest) two rooms are part of the ca.1895-1905 addition. The third floor is unfinished, with one open, full height space framed by exposed structural members.

The site treatment has not been well documented, but included play areas, sand boxes, and trees. A barberry hedge was added in 1925. Five poplars were replaced by pin oaks in 1937.

An examination of school board records reveals only minor alterations over the years. Seven rooms received new wood floors between 1932 and 1937. A fire alarm system was approved in 1933. The basement was excavated and received some finish treatment as a U. S. Civil Works Administration project in 1934. Fire escapes were added to the northeast and southwest sides sometime prior to 1936; they have since been removed, leaving minimal scars in the brickwork. Major repairs followed fire damage as a result of lightning in 1942. Ceilings in eight rooms were replaced to correct emergency conditions in 1944. And throughout the 78 years during which the building served as a school, periodic repairs were made to the plaster, the tower, the furnace, the electrical systems, the blackboards, and the fire escapes.

Consequently, the building, which has stood empty for nearly a quarter of a century, maintains a strong level of integrity. On the exterior, it appears much as it did in a postcard view, probably produced within 20 years of the construction date, showing its appearance after the northwest expansion had been added. The tower roof is currently missing and the original double-hung sash windows have been removed and boarded up; the tower roof, however, could be replicated from historic photos and the windows could readily be replaced with an appropriate double hung (1/1) sash. Otherwise, most of the school's original architectural features are intact and nothing has been added. On the interior, many historic features survive, including wood wainscot, door and window casings, horizontal-panel doors, cast grates for the heating system, diagonal strip flooring, and chalkboards with their chalk trays. To the extent that historic features do not survive, it is the result of extensive water damage rather than subsequent alterations. The damage includes severe deterioration of the main staircase, as well as the failure of the floor and ceiling structure in selected portions of the front block, and extensive plaster damage throughout. Most of the deteriorated elements, however, are restorable or replaceable.