The portables at Parkview School

A portable on the west end of Parkview School.

In 1922, a two-story Parkview School was built on Cahoon Road at the south end of Cahoon Memorial Park. (There was no Wolf Road at the time.) Parkview School housed grades one through twelve. All the Bay Village children went to school in the building. Two years later a third story was needed. In 1926, Forestview School was built to house grades one through six for the many children who now lived in the east end of the village. Parkview still contained grades one through twelve, being the elementary school for the west end children.

For many years Parkview contained the west end elementary and high school grades with no problem. Sometime in the 1930s the school board decided to purchase portable clapboard barrack-style buildings and add them to the west end of the school to help the overflow.

The first portable building became the cafeteria/lunch room. The second building was at one time the shop building but when I was in school in 1943, it held my second- and third-grade classrooms. (It was evident there was a need for a third school on the west end and a bond issue was passed in 1941, but with World War II raging, Glenview wouldn’t be built until 1946.)

Walking west down the tiled hallway of Parkview School you exited the west doors into a walkway with windows on each side and entered the cafeteria and lunch room which occupied the entire first building. If you went through the lunch room you continued down the walkway to the next portable where the second and third grades were held. I remember that our restroom break was in the washroom on the first floor in Parkview School next to the stage on the far east end of the building. There was a high school monitor sitting outside the door of the classroom who would escort us to the washroom.

These portable buildings fit the bill and were used until 1950 when plans were made for a new addition for the west end of Parkview. At this time the portable buildings were detached and taken away. The new two-story west addition was opened in 1952 and the name above the door was Bay High School.

The portables still had a lot of good years left in them. One was recycled as the changing room for the football team and placed behind the south bleachers next to the old football field at Parkview. The other portable was moved into Cahoon Memorial Park west of City Hall and became a place for the high school students to have “after game” dances run by the recreation department. It was named the BayWay. Now the Bay students had a place to hold a dance after a game.

One of the high school clubs usually sponsored the dance by selling tickets at the door, chips and pop. It was a good way to make money. The walls were decorated with football or basketball themes. I remember many happy memories there. Later, the BayWay became a place during the day for child care, after school care and clubs. The recreation department moved in and an addition was built on. Clubs like the Girl Scouts held their meetings there. Today it is rented by Kiddie Kollege.

I don’t know what happened to the portable by the football field, but the portable in Cahoon Park is still very much in use. This old barrack has come a long way.

kay laughlin

I am the Historian for the Bay Village Historical Society, member and Past President, 1976. Lived in the village since 1936.  I was part of a team that developed the Cahoon farmhouse into Rose Hill Museum in 1973.  I participated by inventoring the Cahoon items and serving as the first Accessions Chairman and as a Docent at the museum for 20 years.  I was part of the committee that brought the Osborn house to Cahoon Memorial Park in 1995 and turned it into a learning center.  Along with my sister, Gay Menning, and the society, we wrote the 'Bay Way of Life' history book in 1974.  When Ginny Peterson asked for my help, I offered my historical pictures and wrote the captions for the Arcadia picture book, 'Bay Village,' published in 2007.  

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Volume 9, Issue 1, Posted 10:10 AM, 01.10.2017