Longfellow’s impact should not be forgotten
December 12, 2021
Longfellow Center has been a staple of the Downers Grove community for almost a century and will likely be demolished in the near future to make space for new-construction homes. While the dilapidated school no longer provides much use to the community, its memory should be honored for the impact it has had on Downers Grove for the past nine decades.
The school, built in 1928, went out of operation 43 years ago and has since been used as facilities for District 58. A Burr Ridge-based construction company, McNaughton Development, recently bought the school, which sits on three acres of prime, wooded real estate, for $4.1 million dollars. Longfellow Center’s history needs to be preserved and honored rather than covered over with houses and forgotten about.
As someone who used to live down the street from Longfellow, my family and I have fond memories of playing basketball in the parking lot and my brothers and I learning to ride our bikes on its sidewalks. Longfellow provides a place for families to gather and spend time outdoors. Not only for myself and my family, but for many other community members, Longfellow represents something much deeper than an abandoned school building.
Yet the decision made by District 58 to sell and dismantle Longfellow was the correct decision, financially. Because of deferred maintenance over several decades, the cost to repair the school in its current state would be more than the school is worth. It would not be financially sane for District 58 to even attempt to repair Longfellow to its former glory.
That said, completely demolishing a piece of history that has provided so much to the community would be disgraceful. Tearing down many of the aged trees, some that are centuries old, would destroy the beauty and character that enhances the community. The proposition to entirely use the land to build houses in place of the school is flawed.
Alternatively, Longfellow Center should still be demolished, yet its history should not be erased. A better solution would be to use a portion of the three acres of land on which Longfellow sits and repurpose it into a small, commemorative park, with plaques and signs remembering the impact Longfellow has had on the Downers Grove community. This park could resemble the Lee and Grant Park, which provides a great space for people to walk, dogs to play and families to create more memories.
Patricia Knutson Howie • May 28, 2024 at 10:23 pm
Longfellow was my first school. I remember my kindergarten classroom, easily identifiable as the large bay in front of the building. It was 1959, and although I can no longer remember my teacher’s name, Miss ???, I can still see her clearly–she was a young single woman, slender, who wore capri pants and close-fitting sweaters and her long brown hair up in a ponytail. Now I realize she looked like Audrey Hepburn with ponytail, like my first Barbie doll, the epitome of late 1950s style. I remember counting out loud to 100 while dribbling a ball, the shelves of toys for playtime, and sitting at a desk to practice writing and coloring worksheets. I remember a photo of Eisenhower up next to the clock on the wall. I remember standing in line in the hall, behind the door on the right side of the building, looking up at the classic hanging light fixtures, waiting to be given a small paper cup with a vaccine on a sugar cube. (Mom had signed the permission slip.) I remember running out to our 55 Chevy and breathlessly tumbling into the back seat, hanging over the front seat to show my mom the Dick and Jane book that had the word “handkerchief” in it and telling her, “I can read this big word!”
My class started first grade there, but soon after we were told that we were being divided up and some of us were being sent elsewhere. I was transferred to Pierce Downer for the rest of my elementary years, but I will never forget Longfellow.
I live in Michigan now, but one of the first places I looked for when I discovered Google satellite and street view was Downers Grove, the home in which I grew up, and my schools–and there was Longfellow, by then a computer center for the district. I looked at that large bay area and remembered being on the inside of that room, looking out, only four years old that September of 1959.
This story is three years old now. Longfellow is demolished, and fairly unexciting, unremarkable large homes have been built on the site, just as the author predicted. No park, to my knowledge–which is a shame, that was an excellent idea. My home on Stonewall, the one my father and mother actually participated in building in 1956, was sold last December without anyone stepping a foot inside, the small midcentury modern redwood-sided ranch was sold for land and demolished soon after. Now another fairly unremarkable-looking home is in its place, the predictable black and white one million dollar ‘modern farmhouse,’ which I can assure you from having relatives in Iowa looks nothing like an actual farmhouse–and another small piece of Downers history is lost. There are pockets of homes from the Victorian era, from the turn of the century, from the 1920s-40s, but will there be any left from the boom that was the 1950s midcentury in Downers?
Those of us who went to Longfellow will have our memories. But I am almost 70 now–those of us who remember attending Longfellow will soon die out. I’m looking at the photo of it that accompanies this article, the bay of my kindergarten classroom right there, and I am saddened that it is gone now, without a trace, without a memorial.