During the first month of the 1967-68 school year – as Staples entered a tumultuous era that would earn it a reputation as one of the most progressive high schools in the country – the town turned its attention to the school’s past.
Staples Hall – the original brick building built on Riverside Avenue in 1884 (now the site of the Saugatuck Elementary School auditorium), overshadowed by construction of the “new” unit in 1938, abandoned when the high school decamped to North Avenue in 1958 but then put back in use by Bedford Junior High for homeroom, English, social studies, music and shop (though without bathroom facilities for boys) — met its end.
The occasion drew a small crowd. Frank Osborne, a graduate of Staples’ Class of 1894 and still a Westport resident, was present. Just before the building was razed, he posed on the front steps for a photograph (below) with 3 former Staples teachers: Caroline Beers, Walter Stevenson and Gladys Mansir.
“It seems a shame that they have to destroy all of it – that they couldn’t leave something,” Mr. Osborne said. “The building is still so sound.”
The building was far from sound, however, and in fact the lintel was saved. It was placed in the courtyard on North Avenue; later it was moved to a grassy spot at the entrance, by the tennis courts.
Demolition — and the lintel that still lives, at the North Avenue entrance. (Photo courtesy of Eric Bosch)
During the wrecking operation, the cornerstone that had been laid 83 years earlier was recovered. The old copper box and its contents of 30 items were given to 1st Selectman Herbert Baldwin.
Plans were to eventually hand the box to Einar Anderson, Charles Lunny and Joel Adams, trustees of the Horace Staples estate. “There is hope that it can be opened publicly with some trace of the ceremony with which it was laid in the corner almost 100 years ago,” the Town Crier reported.
That did not happen. Instead, the cornerstone was stuffed into the back of the main office safe on North Avenue. In 1976 the Alternatives class used it during their study of the American bicentennial. The Westport Historical Society gained possession of the box (minus a few items) in the late ‘70s.
That cornerstone – along with the lintel, some souvenir bricks, and fading memories of longtime Westporters – are all that remain of the building that, for over 8 decades, was Staples High School.
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