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LSMORE — Nearly every little tumble-down town in southeast Kansas has an old building or two whose empty rooms echo with the memories of a time when the town was great.
In Elsmore, it’s the abandoned school — a bi-level building, which, with its huge bowed-back roof, hulks like a dozing beast on the far edge of town. Today, the school and adjacent land is up for sale for anyone with $30,000 and an idea for how to restore it. George and Betty Hawley of rural Elsmore are its owners.
The school was constructed in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration. It’s a solid thing, which crouches heavily on the earth, not like a school at all, but like a military installation or a concrete bunker.
There’s a sense, just looking at the low-slung, 20,000 square-foot building, that if the tiny town ever did tip into extinction, this building would survive, braced as it appears to be for end-times.
“You see, the concrete work on that school was put to a kind of competition between the local cement companies around here,” explained Carl Otto, who arrived as an administrator at the Elsmore school in 1953. “Anyway, whoever got it, they put the hardest darn concrete in that building I’ve ever seen. The reason I know is that when I first went there, they had the basketball goal at one end, bolted down to the stage. Well, every time we had a play — or needed to use the stage — we’d have to move that goal over in the corner and bolt it down again. So, I decided I was going to build a goal and hang it up above. In so doing, I had to put holes in that concrete, about 16 inches in. Of course, back then we didn’t have drills like we do now. We had what was called a star drill, which was nothing but a long steel rod, like a chisel. And you just started pounding on the end until you finally got it through. I didn’t think I was ever going to get two holes. I needed two 3/4–inch holes in order to put in bolts big enough to hold it up. And as far as I understand, it’s still hanging there where I put it up.”
Mr. Otto turned 90 on Feb. 12 (“Yes, Lincoln was born on my birthday.”). He began his career in Elsmore as a coach and a bus driver. He later became principal, then was superintendent at the school until 1966. “Now when you go talking about Elsmore school,” chuckled Mr. Otto, “that’s right down my alley.”
As it happened, Betty Hawley (then Boler) was one of his students. Mr. Otto remembers all the Boler girls for being smart and pretty. She and her parents and eight siblings grew up in a small house on the lot next to the building. “So all my life I had to walk to school,” says Betty. “Half a block.
“Now, we own that city lot, the school, the playground, the ball field,” as well as four acres east of the school, which the couple purchased at a subsequent sale.
“But,” said the 71-year-old George Hawley, owner of Hawley Lumber, “we’re ready to sell it all. I bought it to help a friend out who wanted to get rid of it. Back then, you could hardly see the building for trees. We’ve cleaned it up quite a bit. The thing is, we just bought it for no good reason and, right now, we’re simply too old to do anything with it.”
A FEW MONTHS ago, the couple placed an advertisement in “Mother Earth News,” a back-to-the-land magazine based in Topeka but with a readership nationwide.
“I’d been wondering how to sell that thing, and how to advertise it,” explained George. “Well, I’d read about people building homes out of old barns and silos in ‘Mother Earth News,’ and I thought that would just be ideal.”
Betty: “We had our first call on it before they delivered our own magazine. And for a while we had at least a call a day.”
George: “We’ve had 24, 25 calls total, and only one from the state of Kansas. From all over the United States. We’ve even got a guy that is sounding really serious, who is working in Arabia, about to retire from British Petroleum. … We’ve heard from Arizona, Florida, I think Louisiana, one or two from Texas.”
Betty: “Maine, New Mexico. … Most of them are interested in it, because if you live in, say, New York or Florida, you can’t buy a square foot for $30,000.”
George: “In fact, I truly cannot understand how it hasn’t sold yet. Just that addition alone, just that part of it on its own you can’t build these days for $30,000.”
