With all the new buildings and modern housing facing SW
Durham Road on the suburban flank of Tigard, it’s easy to miss the small, white wooden building that started life in
1920 as a two-room schoolhouse.
After all these years, it’s worth glancing occasionally at
the Durham School with a bell still residing in its small steeple. A quick look at the modest building – expanded
in 1937 and again in 1951s – tells us why historic buildings are important to
save.
Without its presence, we might not realize that the
bountiful suburban sprawl around it was once primarily agricultural land. Or that generations of children romped and
played on its grounds, just as we once did wherever else we grew up. And that human life is a continuing chain,
and that we need to remember occasionally that others came before us, just as
others will come after us.
The simple Craftsman-era architecture reminds us that
simplicity can indeed embrace elegance, and that wooden buildings in our heritage
can survive for prolonged periods if we bother to take care of them responsibly
along the way. Woodworkers can look at
the building’s straight lines and recognize that yes, careful, lasting, quality
work indeed preceded the loud buzzing of power tools.
The school and Durham Road are named after Albert Alonzo
Durham, who succeeded as a miner in the California gold fields before arriving
in the Tigard area in 1869. Durham then
built his subsequent economic success as a grist mill operator. The area came to be known as “Durham Station”
and as a stop along the Oregon Electric Railway.
The “old” Durham School we see today is actually the second
Durham School. It seems that no
photographs remain of its predecessor erected in the 19th Century, and little
is known about it today.
The old school that survives has had several uses during its
life, including tenure as an alternative high school. The Tigard School District, to its great
credit, seems committed to maintaining its classrooms and library for additional
future use. Adaptive reuse is a critical
tool for saving historic buildings.
The little white building offers another important lesson
about historic preservation: monumental size or grandeur is not
necessities for a genuine, important monument.
----Fred Leeson
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