HASSO HERING

The former Madison School in Albany is getting a major renovation, as you can see in this photo taken Saturday.

There’s a lot of history in the old Madison School in Albany’s Willamette neighborhood. I looked it up when someone called my attention to the construction work taking place there now.

The work is part of a $14 million renovation of the building, at 905 Fourth Ave. S.E., with direct construction costs of about $11 million. Gerding Builders is the construction manager/general contractor.

There had been a school there as early 1895. But that first building — three floors with a five-story tower — was largely demolished and replaced by a new Madison School that opened in 1936.

Four decades later, the board of the then-existing Albany Elementary School District 5 decided to close Madison. The reasons given were that enrollment had declined and modernizing the building would be too expensive.

The neighborhood objected. The Democrat-Herald reported in December 1975 that about 300 of 324 persons surveyed by the Willamette Neighborhood Advisory Group opposed the closure. They feared the neighborhood would decline without the school, and property values would drop.

Three members of the city council also objected. One of them was Dick Olsen, still on the council almost half a century later. The councilors reasoned that the city’s comprehensive plan called for having neighborhood schools, not for closing them down.

A lot of good the objections did. The school was closed and most of the children attending there were sent to South Shore Elementary instead, where the board voted to build six new classrooms to handle the influx.

At the time of the closure of the schhool, the Linn-Benton Intermediate Education District had already leased part of the building as office space. Then it leased the whole property once the school was gone.

The district needed a conditional use permit to operate offices in a residential zone. The three-member hearings board of the city planning commission approved the permit on a vote of 2-1.

The intermediate district, now called the Linn Benton Lincoln Education Service District, owns the property and is undertaking the current major renovation.

From the outside, the building still looks pretty much as it did in the illustration published by Greater Oregon, an Albany weekly, when the school year opened in 1936.

But unlike the former Albany High School on Third Avenue, which was remodeled at about the same time, Madison School is not listed in Albany’s inventory of historic properties. The ESD thus was spared the need to go to the Landmarks Commission for approval of any exterior changes, such as new windows.

When the renovation is done, maybe the ESD will have public tours to show off the result. (hh)

Greater Oregon published this drawing of the new Madison School in 1936.

The original Madison School in 1895, from the Bob Potts collection at the Albany Regional Museum.