Is the Union School finally dismissed?
Everyone appreciates old-school police work, but do police have to work in an old school? The town will soon decide. Burlington police are proposing a new $46.2M facility that both replaces and resembles the current police station, the former Union School. Town Meeting will hear the proposal May 13.
Burlington Retro approves. This website is about documenting change, not stopping change. Yes, it’s hard to part with quaint old buildings. They contribute much to a town’s character. They provide a “skyline.” But they are organic things with a lifespan, subject to the ravages of time and the elements. The Union School marks an era, but every era comes to an end. In the early 1990s, the building got a new “lease on life” as a police station, but that lease has run out. Here’s what it’s like inside the place:
- It’s a maze — The labyrinthine floor plan wastes everyone’s time just trying to move around.
- Havoc instead of HVAC — The rickety system wastes the town’s money and spills water into ceilings and floors regularly. Mother Nature and Father Time have tag-teamed this building for so many years, there’s hardly a room that isn’t water-damaged, windy, frosty or warped. It’s a constant game of Whac-A-Mole with one issue or another. Wind whistles under warped windows loudly enough to drown conversation in some of the offices.
- Safety hazards— Cracks are forming in the block walls, likely because the building’s ancient underground footings have washed way. Waterlogged ceilings occasionally collapse on desks. The plumbing dates back to 1927, so toilet water leaks into ceilings, sending odor everywhere. Little sewer flies are everywhere in the building if you look closely. Hornets’ nests lurk among the checkerboard of missing ceiling tiles, ravaged by water leaks. These intrusions force some hazardous workarounds, like electrical cables running along the floor near the locker room showers. Air quality throughout the entire building is akin to an old basement bathroom. Police lockers are unventilated and foster mold on anything left inside them for more than a couple of days. Ceiling vents and floor tiles are peppered with black mold. One stairway is clearly much steeper than modern safety codes would allow. Another stairway requires ducking so you don’t bang your skull on the ceiling. Neither can be rectified without an extreme makeover of large areas. Building codes say if you update one thing, you have to update lots of things. The attic has relics from the Union School: doors, windows and student desk/chair combos. But it’s not much fun to browse because you could fall through the floor if you don’t watch your step.
- Vulnerable — Ground-level windows lead to sensitive areas like the electrical panel. Unruly prisoners come into the building within easy reach of the main switchboard, police ammunition and civilian hallways. Prisoner cells violate modern safety codes. One has a broken surveillance camera, but replacement parts are unavailable because the equipment is obsolete. The juvenile cells are supposed to be sound-isolated for privacy. Not here. Everyone in the vicinity can hear conversations. Crime evidence is kept in a locker room with buckling, moldy floors and big windows that can let in light (bad for DNA evidence) or intruders looking to destroy evidence. Doorways, walls, ceilings run afoul of modern fire codes. Public records on the top floor are low-hanging fruit for a fire. Ditto the electrical panel that runs the place. The computer servers are pulled away from walls to make sure they stay dry. Basically, the entire operation could face a shutdown at any time due to any number of “old building” issues.
Here, see for yourself:
This is the path to a new station:
Show the plan to various town boards — The Planning Board, Select Board, Capital Budget, Zoning Bylaw Review Committee and Land Use Committee have already seen it. Police will show it to the Ways and Means Committee May 1 and return to the Select Board May 6. Long story short, the “Board Tour” is well underway. No big objections so far. All agree this is the right time, and the current location is the right place.
Get approval from Town Meeting — It’s set for May 13. Approval would require three votes:
- Two related to rezoning part of the sculpture park area next to Grandview Farm on Center Street. The sculptures would have to move closer together or entirely elsewhere.
- One related to the $46.2M price tag. It will cost the average Burlington taxpayer about $150/year for 20 years starting when construction is done. Overall, Burlington taxpayers have it easy compared with surrounding towns.
Design phase — About 10 months of decision-making about the project, all the details about materials used and the overall “character” of the building. Members of the Police Station Building Advisory Committee have pushed for a design that evokes the Union School, to preserve the historical likeness on the common. Even though some former students would rather forget the place, it’s part of the fabric of the town, literally:
Bidding process — Two or three months to accept bids for a project manager and building contractor.
Construction — About two years, while the police operate from either rented office space or a town-owned area like the Vine Brook water plant, or a bunch of trailers, or some combination of these things.
There’s some irony here. The Union School opened in 1897 as a model of efficiency. This was during the Industrial Revolution, when “economies of scale” dominated thinking. A huge factory delivered more bang for the buck than a bunch of little factories, therefore one central school must be better than the four little neighborhood schools we used prior.
But what about transportation? How would simple, rural children make their way to a central school? Good news. The state had just mandated free transportation to school starting in 1869. Problem solved! You could attend the new Union School no matter how long the ride or how poor you were. At first, Burlington offered a horse-drawn “bus” nicknamed the Barge. Then the automobile literally paved the way to the Union School in the early 1900s.
With everything under one roof, this Burlington education factory soon found its wheelhouse.
- We could order supplies in bulk at reduced prices. Basic things like paper were very expensive for a little farming town.
- We could store everything in one place instead of shuffling throughout the town.
- Only one building to maintain; one school yard to maintain.
- One school meant fewer administrators. Much cheaper!
- Curriculum-wise, it was easier to keep students and teachers on the same page. Literally.
- We could deal with student and personnel issues centrally, and tweak the whole machine for optimum efficiency over time.
And so the building makes perfect sense as a late 19th century schoolhouse. It makes no sense as a 21st century police headquarters. Let’s set the cops free to police the town instead of their crumbling building.
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I attended the Union school from 1949-1953.
My mother, Peggy O’Connor and the rest of her family who lived on Peach Orchard Road attended the Union School in the 20’s and 30’s. I attended Union school in the 6th grade in 63-64. Mrs.Stone the english reacher let me, Maryellen Langone and Marquerite Wholey leave class whenever we wanted to go down to the basement to “tidy up the art supplies”. We had it made.
Kathy Mullen Guicho
My Grandparents, Dad and Uncle, lived on Peach Orchard, I believe starting in the 30s
The only neighbors my mother spoke about was how kindly Mrs Kerrigan was. My uncles all worked in the fields behind the house . Where the high school was. I think it’s the junior high school or middle school now.
Any old photos?
I spent 4 1/2 years in that school. I still remember those walls in the cafeteria which was in the basement (small boulders painted a light yellow). I find it interesting that “One stairway is clearly much steeper than modern safety codes would allow.” When I was in the 3rd, 4th and 6th grades my class rooms were on the 2nd floor so I had to walk up and down those stairs for recess, lunch and arriving and leaving. I moved to the Memorial School for the 5th grade but was back for the 6th grade. I spent my 7th grade at the original high school (Center School to most people who read this) on double sessions and then back to the Union School for the 8th grade where we had to go up and down those stairs several more times each day because we changed class rooms for each subject Math and English were on the 1st floor and the rest of my classes were on the 2nd floor and home ec and the cafeteria were in the basement so I got my exercise going up and down those steep stairs.
I’ll be sorry to see it demolished but I always wondered how it could have been made into a police station. When I go back to tour Burlington I always go by it and from the outside it looked the same as it did 70 years ago. It was only 55 years old when I started out in the annex in the 2nd grade where the chairs and desks were bolted to the floor.
I forgot to add my name to the previous comment. Dorothy MacKay Greene class of 1962.
went to this school back in the late 50 early 60. Love the memories i left there and the teachers. wish I could go back in time. There was a place outside that we carved are letters in. I’m sure it’s gone. sorry to see this place go. It should stand as an old building like the Library.
LOL no surprise, Burlington does not value its historical buildings, another one bites the dust
just curios, are you from burlington? becuase if you lived here then you would be aware of the efforts to preserve history here
This is a bad idea. Even a new structure resembling the current building will almost certainly look cheap and chintzy with value engineering (IE cutting costs on things like exterior materials and roofline, etc) and other “needed” changes slipped in after approval. Remove the 1992 addition (which it seems is where a lot of the problems stem from), and repurpose the old schoolhouse into housing or other municipal use and find a better location for a police station. A generation ago we bent over backwards to preserve that building into its current use, and this is the proposal? While I appreciate the work that went into this, it’s time to go back to the drawing board, this is too valuable a landmark in too prominent a place to mess with. It will change the character of the Town Common area.
Well, unfortunately, in this day and age, a police department needs to be very prominent in its towns presence, and most certainly within the center as you will see with any town. Are you seriously suggesting we put housing on the common? And why was it a generation ago? The idea to preserve this building was to make it into a police station, which was absolutely ridiculous, but obviously save the town fathers much much money when they should’ve started looking for a new area for a up-to-date police station once again so here we are, I believe this is ridiculous that we discuss this. It should be a priority, especially since the town has grown and the amount of tax dollars that are being poured into this town. I don’t know, maybe we could build another mall?
I agree. This is too prominent a place and too much of a landmark on the Town Common and too big a part of the town’s history to take off the landscape. Any replica of the Union School will probably look cheap, unless the exact dimensions and exterior materials, etc. are used in the new building. While few doubt the need for a new police station, the town would be better served by finding another location. There is plenty of land near the High School that isn’t Article 97 protected and would be more appropriate. Old schoolhouses like this make very good housing (see the old Hancock and Muzzy schools in Lexington, the old-old Reading High School, the old North Woodstock school in NH, Wells School in Southbridge, among many, many others. Also, it will help the town meet its 40B and MBTA Communities Law compliance. That area has been a residential area since about 1640, so I don’t see why the anon who posted before me thinks housing here, of all things, would be a problem (I could imagine the school could be converted into six to eight very well appointed residential units, if not more, smaller apartments). Another alternative would be some other municipal use, as the town always seems to need more office or recreation space (maybe as an annex for the library and Recreation Department for programming, and office space, etc.). In the 60s, we altered the character of the Common by removing another fine landmark, the second town hall, to make way for a police station that was used for just over 20 years. We shouldn’t make that mistake again.
The second Town Hall was indeed much more interesting than the current one.
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attended school there back in 65. awesome memories. But this is about our Burlington police force.
We need to give them the tools to continue to protect us and to serve our community as they always have. Many of our officers are sons or daughters, even grandchildren of previous officers. If you desire top, up to date police work then we need to be provide a state of the art facility. Our Police department has been pushed onto the back burner for too long. They have endured and adapted to the towns solutions of their needs. A new library, new ball fields, crikey, awesome new state of the art town barns! Our PD deserve a new facility. NOT updated again. They have been passed over so many times. Yes, it is time. I think the New town barns would be perfect for our temporary PD while the new facility is being built. They must have the most up to date technology and 411 on our town.
I have literally never been in that school at all. I attended 5 th grade at the Center School with Mrs. Marconi after grades 1 through 4 at the Wildwood School.
Was it the High School in the 30s and 40s?
Never a high school.