Our history

Maplewood School, since 1912

Maplewood School opened in the fall of 1912 in a one-room portable schoolhouse with a pot-bellied stove, 26 boys, 43 girls and one teacher.

It outgrew that room within a year. A two-classroom schoolhouse with a rooftop bell went up over the winter of 1913–14, the gym followed in 1947 (it’s still in use), and the main building was dedicated in November 1953.

Along the way the neighborhood has stood up for its school more than once: when the school board moved to close it in 1935, at a community forum on school closures in 1976, and again in 1980. In 2012 Maplewood celebrated its hundredth year.

  • The original one-room Maplewood schoolhouse, a small wooden building with a gable roof behind a white fence
    1912The original one-room schoolhouse, photographed in 1953George Fox University Archives
  • Rows of students posed in front of the two-story second schoolhouse
    1913–14Students in front of the second schoolhouseCourtesy of Lorene & Dick Lehrer
  • A large group of students posed on the lawn in front of Maplewood School
    1980Students in front of the schoolMaplewood PTA Archives
  • The front of Maplewood’s main building with the colorful HELLO! mural above the windows
    TodayThe HELLO! mural on the main building

Read the history of Maplewood School

Photos, keepsakes and stories from 1912 to today, on maplewoodhistory.com