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Buffington Elementary School served the community for 78 years.
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The city of
Huntington's first school was a four-room brick building built at 720 4th Ave.
in 1872,
one year after the city's birth. Four more rooms were added to the
building in 1882, but ultimately
the growing student body prompted construction
of a new larger school.
The first
school building had been named for the Buffington family, members of which
played
a prominent role in the region's early history. When a new school was
built on the corner of 5th
Avenue and 6th Street, it was named Buffington
Elementary. (The Board of Education then gave
the original 4th Avenue building
to the city, which used it to house Huntington's first hospital.)
The city's
first school building had been severely plain, but the new school that opened in
1897
was an imposing, Victorian-like design. Old records show that in 1896 the
school's principal
was Miss Sallie Peyton, who was paid a less than princely
salary of $60 a month.
Buffington
once served more than 300 students. Its alumni include television game show host
Peter Marshall
and The Herald-Dispatch sports columnist Chuck Landon. By the
1960s, the school's enrollment had declined
to little more than 200 and by 1975
it had dropped even lower, to 115. Citing the declining enrollment
and the
rising cost of upkeep for the aging building, the school board ordered
Buffington closed.
On the final
school day at Buffington, a veteran teacher told a Herald-Dispatch reporter that
despite the building's
peeling paint and cracked plaster, it seemed to have a
soul; and leaving it was almost like a death in the family.
In 1976, the
former school was sold at public auction, with Huntington Lodge 64 of the
Independent Order
of Odd Fellows (IOOF) submitting the winning high bid of
$181,000. In 1996, the John W. Clark Oil Co.
purchased the building, demolishing
it to make way for construction of a service station/convenience store.
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Note: This Article and picture appeared in the Herald-Dispatch Newspaper on Mar. 23 , 2015
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