Woodrow Wilson Elementary School

Kalamazoo Public Schools

Overcrowding at Roosevelt Elementary School on the east side of Kalamazoo led the School Board in the 1920s to search for a location for a new school. By August of 1927, they purchased a site on the south side of East Main between Lum and Gayle avenues, just a mile to the east of Roosevelt in the Eastwood neighborhood of Kalamazoo Township. Local architect Ernest Batterson received the contract for the design of the building, which would house initially over three hundred and forty students from kindergarten through fifth grade transferring from Roosevelt. David Little Construction Company would build the structure.

There seemed to be no debate about the name of the school as there had been a precedent set in the Kalamazoo Public schools over the last eight years to name new schools or rename older ones after former United States Presidents. For this school, the choice was Woodrow Wilson, the twentieth-eighth President who passed away just four years before.

An article in an April of 1929 issue of the Kalamazoo Gazette called the design of the building “modified gothic,” a different style from so many of the other schools built in the School District during this decade.  One of its most prominent features were the large Gothic arched windows at both of the front entrances to the east and to the west. The front façade also had a series of buttresses and an interesting central bay entrance with smaller Gothic arched windows. Batterson also incorporated elements of Gothic architecture in the Salvation Army building located at the southeast corner of North Rose and Eleanor Streets completed in 1927. Wilson Elementary opened on a Monday morning in April of 1929 just after students’ spring break.

For the next fifty-one years, this school continued to be a center of education for the children of the neighborhood along with a community center for local organizations like so many of the schools of the Kalamazoo Public School District. By 1980, declining enrollment in addition to other reasons, led the District to close permanently a number of elementary schools including Woodrow Wilson.

By 1996, after being for sale, rented to outside organizations and used for District storage, the building came down. Initial plans for the site were to build a stockroom facility for the School District but instead, the District received proposals to buy the empty land for either a church or a collection of houses.  Members of an Eastwood committee had another idea and spent well over a year to raise the necessary funds to purchase it for a park. Aided by the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, they reached their financial goal in 1999. The Charter Township of Kalamazoo now owns and maintains the site now known as the Wilson Recreation Park. Composed of 2.5 acres it provides a place for all enjoy. The school is gone but the name continues for years to come.

Compiled & written by Lynn Houghton, June 2020. Last updated 28 July 2020.