Final farewells for Garfield, Arthur schools
Cedar Rapids buildings from 1915 are closing this year
CEDAR RAPIDS — It was a class reunion. It was a family reunion. Most importantly, it was a time to say goodbye.
Garfield Elementary School, 1201 Maplewood Dr. NE, and Arthur Elementary School, 2630 B Ave. NE, are closing their doors to students in a month. Open houses Saturday brought community members in for one last look around each.
The Cedar Rapids Community School District is combining their attendance areas north of downtown into Trailside Elementary. The new school is being built across 27th Avenue NE from Arthur, where the 1952 “Little Arthur” annex building stood. Despite pleas from area residents and families, the school board voted in 2018 to close Garfield as part of a districtwide “facilities master plan” that would replace, renovate, and combine schools. The board reaffirmed that plan in 2022, when it decided that a new school would be built instead of retaining Arthur.
JoAnna (Stuelke) Mantz, more popularly known to Hawkeye women’s basketball fans as “Hannah’s mom,” talked about experiencing Generation X’s pivotal school moment at Arthur. “They wheeled in the big TVs” for the launch of space shuttle Challenger in 1986, when she was in first grade. When the shuttle carrying teacher Christa McAuliffe tragically exploded shortly after liftoff, the teacher silently turned the TV off and class resumed.
Garfield and Arthur are among the oldest school buildings in operation in Iowa in the 2023-24 school year, and the oldest in Cedar Rapids. The schools, named after the 20th and 21st U.S. presidents, opened in 1915. Arthur is more of a “castle” while Garfield has elements of Egyptian influence, historian Mark Stoffer Hunter told Cindy Hadish for the schools’ centennials in 2015.
In Arthur’s cafeteria and Garfield’s gymnasium — both much smaller than modern versions — Parent-Teacher Association record books and class photo books were laid out for visitors to review and reminisce. Those materials will be turned over to Hunter and the History Center for preservation. The buildings will be sold.
“Standing on two acres of gently sloping grass with many handsome hard maples and other attractive native trees and shrubs, this building will be especially attractive,” the Cedar Rapids Republican wrote about Garfield on Nov. 22, 1914. “It has been designed by the architects to fit in harmoniously with its surroundings.”
Some of those trees met a tragic end in the 2020 derecho. Garfield Principal Joy Long recalled that it was teacher orientation day. Long received early word of the storm from her son and staff retreated to the “dungeon” for shelter. (The 1910s schools do not have basements, only furnace rooms.) When they emerged 45 minutes later, water was pouring into the building and a tree had smashed down on a first-year teacher’s car.
Long will not be following the students to Trailside; she’s retiring. Lunch lady Tammy Scott will, though. “I’m going to miss this place,” she said. Even when Scott was having a bad day, there were kids who brightened it with a hug.
Nancy Raue, a former Garfield student and then longtime Garfield teacher, had an endless stream of people breaking into smiles when they saw her in the hallway. “We were a family here,” Raue said of her students and Garfield as a whole. An annual event was “Orange Day,” when all the students wore orange and had their picture taken in front of an orange 1975 Volkswagen Beetle. Anika Smith, a former student of Raue’s, remembered the reading tub of books in kindergarten.
Being able to teach with some of the same teachers who taught her was “like winning the lottery,” said Raue, who taught varying grades at Garfield from 1989 to 2016 and will be retiring from education this year.
For former students, the return put things in perspective — literally. “It feels smaller now,” Lauren Treiber said as she looked at her old fifth-grade room that was now a third-grade room. Treiber works in education as a counselor and understands that it’s time for an upgrade.
Mike Hall teaches fourth- and fifth-graders in violin around Cedar Rapids. He loves the character of the old buildings. Trailside is going to look weird as a new school in an old neighborhood, he said. “It looks like a warehouse … or a prison.” It will, however, have better climate control — no window air conditioners or radiators — and be compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Last November, the largest school bond referendum in Iowa history, necessary to keep the Cedar Rapids district’s timeline in place, went down in a massive defeat. It was too late for Garfield and Arthur, though.
Kylee Humphries, instructional coach at Garfield, will miss how small and unique its different rooms were. “I feel like you make a lot of stories” every year, she said.
Now students in part of Cedar Rapids will be making those stories somewhere else.
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Great article about the new Trailside School in Cedar Rapids. Our daughter attended the soon-to-be-replaced Arthur School, and our son played sports on the land of the new school. At $30 million the new elementary school is expensive. I wonder if a portion of that money could have updated the existing two elementary schools that are being replaced. I'm often told how much better Europe retains its historical structures than the U.S. Strangely, old schools in this country are eagerly abandoned.