By Prudence Brighton, Lowell Sun correspondent
DRACUT — The doors of the 124-year-old Dracut Centre School are open again, but students and teachers will not be walking into the building when the school year begins. Instead, veterans and their families will soon call it home.
At a Thursday ceremony celebrating completion of this adaptive reuse project, town officials, other dignitaries and many alumni of the school gathered to mark its new function as affordable housing for veterans.
“Today is a wonderful day for Dracut,” Board of Selectmen Chair Alison Genest said. “It’s a day that underscores the power of collaboration. It’s a day that celebrates preservation and rehabilitation. Most of all, today is a day that showcases our community’s support for our incredible veterans.
“Good things happen when people work together. As you can see by this beautiful building, when people in Dracut work together, some great things happen,” Genest added.
The $4.6 million construction project represents a collaboration between the town of Dracut and the Lowell-based Coalition for a Better Acre. It also represents contributions from MassHousing, a quasi-public agency that helps finance affordable housing in the state, as well as the Pentucket Bank, the Greater Lowell Technical High School, the Chelmsford Quilt Guild and others.
Dracut is ahead of the curve for veterans’ housing. It began planning for this project in 2017 with a Town Meeting vote to approve an appropriation of $200,000. More town funding followed with a total of $1.2 million pledged to the project. Grants and some funding from the state Department of Housing and Community Development also supported the work.
Once a four-room school, the building now features nine apartments. Within the next few weeks, veterans and their families will begin moving into the building. The new occupants were chosen by lottery in the spring. The nine apartments include one studio and a mix of one- and two-bedroom units. The units are all income-restricted, requiring residents to have income of no more than 80% of the median income.
The unique character of the building and its goal of adaptive reuse attracted the attention of the highly rated PBS series “This Old House.” And crews from that program were onsite on six occasions over the last several months to track its progress.
The school was constructed in 1898 and some 8,000 schoolchildren are estimated to have passed through its four classrooms over the 80 years it served the town as a school. According to a document from the Massachusetts Historical Commission, the maximum capacity of the school was 180 pupils. Classes ranged in size from 35 to 40 children who grouped in four grade levels through eighth grade.
When the school closed in 1980, it became the Town Hall Annex for a number of years.
“Despite being in an advanced state of deterioration (it) appears to retain virtually all of its original building fabric,” according to the Massachusetts Historical Commission. “It is richly embellished with neoclassical detailing.”
And now, it will continue to serve a very special purpose in the community, Genest said.
“As we all know, our veterans can face many challenges, including physical injuries, PTSD and homelessness,” she said. “Whether it’s in our town, our state or our country, one homeless veteran is one homeless veteran too many.”
One theme emerged listening to those who toured the building after the ceremony, and that was one of thanks that the school was not demolished despite deterioration.
Where once-decaying cedar shingles marked the exterior, bright yellow clapboard and white trim now call attention from the street. The interior has plentiful natural lighting from abundant windows. Peeking into the apartments, those who toured the building noticed the old blackboards incorporated into modern designs.
The wooden floors are newly polished, but “they still creak,” said Charlie Gendreau. That brought his days as a first-grade student immediately to mind. He attended the school in the 1960s, and his great-grandfather was once a custodian there.
Gendreau remembers that the two staircases were once strictly divided between the genders. “The boys used one staircase and the girls used the other. And the girls had to wear dresses,” he said.
Albert Ogonowski, a retired dentist in town, also had vivid memories of the division of sexes. He also remembers the time when the teachers were women and they could not be married. “It was always Miss Kelly, or Miss Sullivan,” he said.
Now nearing 90, Ogonowski recounted some of his family’s history in town. Most famously, his nephew, John Ogonowski, was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
For Linda Trouville, now a member of the Dracut School Committee, she began her teaching career at the Centre School after graduating from college in the early 1970s. She went in search of her old classroom as the crowd began to snake its way through the apartments.
Jay Mason, the principal architect at Architectural Consulting Services in Lowell, discussed how the firm approaches historical buildings in adaptive reuse projects.
“We believe the sustainable and efficient re-use of existing properties is an important way to build healthy neighborhoods and create lasting, positive environments for our clients and the general public,” he said.