Longfellow School

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Longfellow School

Status: Lost

Year Built: 1917

Year Lost: 2007

Style: Collegiate Gothic

Alt. name:

Builder/Architect: H. Wellington Smith

Past Owner(s): Butte School District

Geocode:

Lat:

Long:

Elevation:

Neighborhood: Gilman Addition

The following text is taken from the Butte CPR Lost Properties page. Please edit and expand it.

Declared surplus property by the Butte School Board in September, 2006, this 32,703-square-foot structure sat on about 2 acres of land. The central core of the building was erected in 1917, with wings added in the 1940s and 1950s. The address was 1629 Roosevelt, west of Harrison Ave. The building was used as a school until 2001, when it closed because of declining enrollments. It was one of only 15 properties in Silver Bow County that was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places, making it eligible for various Federal Tax Credit and Abatement Programs for rehabilitation.

Another Butte school, Lincoln, was sold in 2004 for $16,000. The assessed value of the Longfellow School in 2006 was $41,280; the school district offered the property in 2003 for a minimum purchase price of $230,000, but there were no takers. Demolition cost is estimated at about $100,000. In April 2007, the property was sold for $125,100 to a company in Nevada through a bid packet procedure with a minimum bid of $25,000. Glogam Corp. planned to rehabilitate the building, but in May 2007 the deal fell through. In June, a local bidder became the owner in the second bid round; that owner began to demolish it in early November 2007 although a demolition review had not been done by the local Historic Preservation Commission. Ultimately on appeal to the county Council of Commissioners, demolition was approved and the building was lost.

Architect H. Wellington Smith considered the Longfellow and Hawthorne Schools to be his "masterpieces" (Butte Miner, March 24, 1918).

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