Way OT-Pictures Of Abandoned School Buildings In Kansas

1206SWMO

Well-known Member
One of my hobbies is taking pictures of small Kansas towns under population 500..Quite often there is an empty school building in them...Here are just a few of the 100 or so schools that I have pictures for...

1-2 Alexander,KS-one magnificent looking old school
3-Hunter,KS
4-Prairie View,KS
5-Neosho Falls,KS
6-Piedmont,KS
7-Burdick,KS
8-Gem,KS
9-Gypsum,KS
10-Gypsum,KS old abandoned flour mill and elevator
11-Parker,KS
12-Cedar Point,KS
13-Cedar Point,KS old mill that is in danger of falling down
14-Woodbine,KS
15-Codell.KS
16-Bazine,KS
17-Vernon,KS
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(reply to post at 14:50:00 05/04/13) [/quot

Back east here old school buildings always get renovated into apartments, condo's or offices. Old mill buildings sometimes go vacant for some years but they are almost all now offices or apartments.
 
Great Pictures.
I'm sure who ever graduated from those old schools would hate to see them buildings in that condition...
 
You missed the old high school in Vermillion, KS. I believe their last graduating class was in 1967. I think they used it as a daycare center later and for class reunions since then.
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Heres the old HS at Mahaska,KS which was made in to
apartments..There are no services in Mahaska and its over 20
miles to the nearest shopping town..
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I agree. Neat pictures. And it seems most of them are just regular square design like around here.
 
Wish I could post a pic of my old one room school, but I can't seem to get it done. They do have a website "Morton School, Shelby, Ohio". At least a group of grads restored it and it is still used a demonstration site for local school districts. They have grade school kids from around the county experience a day in a one room school, outside bathrooms and all. I see those beautiful old buildings and think the people who built them planned on them lasting a long time, and the taxpayers who paid for them dug deep for their kids education. I don't think you see so much of that today, everybody expects someone else to pay.
 
Tom,I've been in Vermillion and took over 20 pictures there..
Heres my picture of the school taken on a rainy day several years ago..
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We have them everywhere here too. Empty High School just 2 miles away. Mills Prairie. I am lucky, my one room school house was moved to the city park. This is what happens when there is nothing for the kids to make a living doing in the country. South East Illinois also. We have a chance for things to change, with the coming of the horizontal Oil drilling and Fracking. But our friends in Chicago don't seem to want it!
 
Glad to see somebody took the initiative to do something constructive with some of the buildings. There's no reason to let all of them just rot. Maybe O's Entitlement Villiage could move into some of them.
 
While we are on the subject of the Mahaska, Kansas High School/apartments, I read in the news that a lady was shot there within the last week.
 
The town is down to about 120 people. I took some pictures of the downtown area a few years back. I don't know if they even have their post office anymore. My wife's relatives grew up around there.
Tom
 
Have you been in Blaine, KS where KS 99 meets KS 13? We traveled those highways several times when our son and wife lived in Manhattan, KS.
Ron
 
I am glad someone is documenting these old buildings of our past, they are like old barns in that it is a past way of life that is disappearing. The one I attended as a child was closed and sat vacant for about 30 years, I watched as the roof eventually caved in and the facade crumbled, county finally stepped in and had it torn down.
 
Ron,yes I've been in Blaine,KS...My wife took a picture of me standing by the sign on Hwy 99....I have pictures of all the old buildings in town..Heres the beautiful Catholic church in Blaine..Theres very few towns in Kansas that I havent been in..
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2 years ago the school district sold the old Main Elementary school, a 3 story brick structure with Gym to developers for practically nothing. Main was a huge structure built in 1896 as the original high school. My Grandpa and Father and step Father graduated from there and I attended 5th and 6th grade there, my daughter attended 9th grade there as it was the temporary middle school for a couple years. The developers have had it demolished and the property graded to put in high end housing along the scenic Susquehanna river. The following October in an "unprecidented event", the scenic Susquehanna showed her attitude by putting the property under 4 feet of muddy flood water just as she did in 1972. Now instead of the $50-$75 per square foot the developers had hoped to realize by selling lots, they would probably be thrilled to get a buck a square foot.
 
Vermillion still had a post office in May 2011...I took a picture of it and its a fairly new building..
 
If only those walls could speak. The gymnasium is all that's left the school I went to. It's an auction house now and whenever I go in there I think about all the laps I ran around that floor.

I too used to look at all of those old abandoned school houses when I traveled through Kansas. They look like fortresses on the prairie. Come to think if it, I helped replace the hydro in a combine in the parking lot of the abandoned school in Putnam, Oklahoma on HWY 183. Seems like I peeked in a window and saw the pictures of the veterans that attended that school. Maybe someone here from that area can correct me on that. Jim
 
1206SWMO,

Wow. Thanks for posting. Love old buildings.

So why do these look like "town/city" buildings... yet out in the middle of nowhere? Very curious.
 
My one room grade school is gone that I attended and also the high school that I attended. I must be old.
I went through Blaine the other day and seemed like they tore down the building to the west of the church and are building something new.
 
In Hanley Falls Mn theres a old school like those they turned into Minnesota machinery museum. It has a nice show the second full weekend in august.
 
I thought #3 looked like Hunter. After my grandparents sold the farm they moved to Hunter, and Grandma worked in the school cafeteria. My Mom's youngest sister graduated from Sylvan Grove after Hunter HS closed.

My Mom graduated from Codell HS in 1950, she had also attended Bunker Hill HS. I was at a family reunion in Codell (maybe 1988) and someone asked where I was from and I said Indiana, she said "You must be one of Patty's boys". And she was right.
 

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