Frank B. Cooper School
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| (Old) Frank B. Cooper School | |
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| U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
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| Location: | Delridge, Seattle, Washington |
| Built/Founded: | 1917, expanded 1929 |
| Architect: | Edgar Blair, Floyd A. Naramore |
| Added to NRHP: | 2003 |
| NRHP Reference#: | 03000161 |
Frank B. Cooper Elementary School, usually called Cooper School, serves students from kindergarten through 5th grade. Located in the Pigeon Point neighborhood of Delridge, Seattle, Washington, it is part of the Seattle Public Schools district. The school’s 14-acre site is immediately adjacent to the 182-acre West Duwamish Greenbelt, one of Seattle’s largest wildlife habitat corridors. This rich natural environment enhances the school’s environmental education program.
While the current building, located at 1901 SW Genesee Street, was opened in 1999, Cooper School enjoys a long history in the community, dating back to 1906, when a group of 70 students, children of steel mill workers, attended classes at Youngstown School in a small building offered by the Seattle Steel Company. A year later, a wooden building—know as Riverside School[1]—was built for the school at the base of Pigeon Hill. As the population of the community grew, the wooden structure was replaced by a brick building 1917, which was designed by Edgar Blair, with a 1929 expansion designed by Floyd Naramore. In 1939, the school was renamed to honor Frank B. Cooper, a former Seattle school superintendent. The historic Youngstown School building, located at 4408 Delridge Way SW, now houses an arts and cultural center. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.[2][3]
One of the school's assets is its diversity. Approximately 80 percent of Cooper students are racial or ethnic minorities and approximately one-quarter are bilingual.
The first African American teacher hired to teach in Seattle Public Schools, Mrs. Thelma Dewitty, worked at Cooper School from 1947 until 1953.[2][3]
[edit] Notes
- ^ (Thompson & Marr 2002): Cooper.
- ^ a b Judy Bentley. "Our Schools, Our Selves", Seattle Times, 2006-10-29.
- ^ a b Seattle, Washington: Frank B. Cooper Elementary School, National Parks Service, Women's History Month pages, 2004. Accessed online 16 September 2007.
[edit] References
- Thompson, Nile & Marr, Carolyn (2002), Building for learning - Seattle Public Schools Histories, 1862-2000, Seattle: Seattle Public Schools, <http://www.seattleschools.org/area/historybook/index.dxml>. Retrieved on 9 December 2007. Apparently no ISBN. Available online as a series of PDFs, including Cooper.
[edit] External links
- Cooper Elementary School
- HistoryLink.org essay on Thelma Dewitty
- Preservation Seattle article on the original Cooper School building
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