Modern schools usually don’t often trip my trigger, but a drive past Valley Grove Elementary east of Anderson made me do a double-take. The building sprawls along County Road 300-East with quirky, polygonal-shaped wings jutting out like something from a futuristic sketchbook. Still, there’s more to the story: evidence of a much older school built in 1920 still lives on through its later additions.
A school at Valley Grove dates to at least 1880, when a one-room version stood on land owned by the Forkner family, four-fifths of a mile east of Valley Grove Road1. Built in the 1890s, the structure still stands today as a home2. In 1920, a two-story, three-room Union Township consolidated school was built on the Thomas East farm3, half a mile south of the original site4. The $70,000 building meant the end of the old Keesling, Clem, and Valley Grove schoolhouses5.
Today’s Valley Grove Elementary bears no resemblance to the original structure, and tracking down its additions is tricky. For example, Union Township officials gave preliminary approval for a $37,000 WPA project to renovate the Valley Grove building in 1939. The plan called for a 58-by-60-foot gymnasium and auditorium on the west side, a 30-by-35-foot classroom on the east side, and a fully modernized basement6. Unfortunately, the project appears to have never been carried out.
1958 brought an addition to the 1920 structure that included eight classrooms and a gymnasium/multipurpose room7. Another addition twenty years later added two kindergarten rooms, a new cafeteria, a kitchen, and administrative offices8. One final expansion in 1987 and 1988 saw the addition of a diamond-shaped addition with ten classrooms and a library. The two-story 1920 structure was demolished as part of the project9.
Fortunately for history lovers, not all was lost. The name and date block of the original Union Township School at Valley Grove was saved and incorporated into part of the new addition. You can see it just south of what appears to be one of the building’s main entrances.
Although Valley Grove Elementary looks every bit like a late-20th-century school today, its story stretches back more than a century. Each addition and subtraction reflects a different era of educational priorities, like the drive for township consolidation in the 1920s, the mid-century push for modern facilities, or the quirky architectural experiments of the 1980s. Still, the surviving name and date block from the 1920 Union Township School remains a reminder that even as buildings evolve, the history they carry can still be traced if you know where to look.
Sources Cited
1 Kingman Brothers. (1880). History of Madison County, Indiana with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches. Chicago, IL.
2 Bibbs, R. (2020, March 8). Valley Grove Elementary School celebrates 100 years of educating rural Anderson students. The Herald Bulletin. Web. Retrieved September 30, 2021.
3 Consolidated Schools For Union Township (1920, April 18). The Anderson Herald. p. 1.
4 Schools in Union Are Advanced (1958, July 17). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1.
5 (See footnote 3).
6 Improvement Planned For Valley Grove (1939, April 29). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1.
7 Open House Set At New Valley Grove School Sunday (1958, October 17). The Anderson Herald. p. 16.
8 New rooms at Valley Grove done (1978, October 4). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 12.
9 Rendfield, R. (1986, October 16). Valley Grove price tag increases. The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1.
My grandparents lived in Valley grove during the late 1940s early 1950 before inheriting a small house at 2429 Madison Avenue in Anderson. There place in Valley Grove was probably a rental, and I was told it wa a pretty dad old farmhouse. I still have a few photos of the place from 1950/51. My cousin, just a year ago sold the last piece of property that anyone in my family owned in Valley Grove.
I don’t work that dar from valley grove. I’ll have to take a drive through the area with photos in mind!