| Leonidas School | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Address | |
3094 Church St. Leonidas , 49066 United States | |
| Information | |
| Type | Public |
| Principal | Rachel Kowalski |
| Grades | K–8 |
| Mascot | Magi |
| Website | colonschools |
Leonidas Stone School is a school building which is part of the Colon Community Schools system in northeastern St. Joseph County, Michigan. The Leonidas Stone School is a work of art an embodiment of government work project during the Great Depression and a working school for over 8 decades.
The School is a working school part of the Colon Public School System. It houses grades K–8.
The building that is now known as the Leonidas Stone School opened in 1935. Construction began on December 15, 1933. [1] The building architect was Randall Wagner. [2] It was part of President Franklin D. Rosevelt's New Deal Civil Works Administration. The building was built by two local stonemasons Charlie Blue and Laverne Harmon. These two were acclaimed fieldstone builders who were well known in Southern Michigan from the 1920-1950s. [3] It is believed that all the stone is from fieldstone from local farms. Under the terms of the CWA project, the work had to be finished by Feb. 15, when construction only started in December. [4]
"The Leonidas village school district [had] submitted a proposal for a new school building. Plans call for cobblestone construction." [5]
The Construction of the building was to be a building 60 by 60 feet with four rooms and a basement, it was to be one story high. 18 men were employed to build the building. [6] The Stone school was replacing the Leonidas village school which was built in 1859 and only cost $1,000 to build. [7] Charles Robinson was in charge of the carpentry work and Charles Blue of the Mason work. [8]
The interior of the stone school was an oak interior in the four-room schoolhouse. [2]
The School was just one of several CWA projects in St. Joseph County. From the passage of the CWA till March St. Joseph County had spent $121.601.14 for all projects including the Stone School. [9] In the State of Michigan all 72,000 workers were issued a dismissal order as the funding for the CWA projects ended on April 1, 1934. [10] The St. Joseph County Fairgrounds even saw improvements during the winter work of the CWA. All the buildings were painted a new track was built and other improvements made. [11]
In 1997, it was proposed that students would stop using the old fieldstone School and bus them to another location. [12]
The school chairman at the time of the opening of the Stone School was Mark Smith, with the teacher for junior high school as Walter Gorsline, and Miss Grace Jenkins as a teacher of the grade school. [1]
The Stone School celebrated its 60th anniversary on May 27, 1995, where they invited all prior students, teachers and community members back to share in the school's history. [13]
Fieldstone is a nuisance for farmers and have to remove from the field during the nineteenth century they began to be used for construction. [3] However, the stones can trace their roots in the Michigan area from Glacial deposits mostly from the last glacial period known as the Wisconsin Glaciation.
The Stone School House is listed on several cites for Michigan History and architecture as a place to visit. [14]
The Stone School is sometimes including on Historic tours of the area. [15] [16]
The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was a short-lived job creation program established by the New Deal during the Great Depression in the United States to rapidly create mostly manual-labor jobs for millions of unemployed workers. The jobs were merely temporary, for the duration of the hard winter of 1933–34. President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the CWA on November 8, 1933, and put Harry L. Hopkins in charge of the short-term agency.
St. Joseph County is a county located in the U.S. state of Michigan, on the central southern border with Indiana. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 60,939. The county seat is Centreville.
Albert Kahn was an American industrial architect who designed industrial plant complexes such as the Ford River Rouge automobile complex. He designed the construction of Detroit skyscrapers and office buildings as well as mansions in the city suburbs. He led an organization of hundreds of architect associates and in 1937, designed 19% of all architect-designed industrial factories in the United States. Under a unique contract in 1929, Kahn established a design and training office in Moscow, sending twenty-five staff there to train Soviet architects and engineers, and to design hundreds of industrial buildings under their first five-year plan. They trained more than 4,000 architects and engineers using Kahn's concepts. In 1943, the Franklin Institute posthumously awarded Kahn the Frank P. Brown Medal.
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was a program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, building on the Herbert Hoover administration's Emergency Relief and Construction Act. It was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
M-86 is an east–west state trunkline highway in the US state of Michigan in the southern portion of the Lower Peninsula. The highway starts at Business US Highway 131 and M-60 in Three Rivers and ends at US Highway 12 (US 12) near Coldwater. In between, it crosses farm country and runs along a section of the Prairie River. Following a highway originally numbered M-7, the roadway was renumbered M-86 in 1940. It has been a part of the state highway system at least since 1927. Two other roadways carried the M-86 designation in the 1920s. Two bridges along the road are eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).
WOTV is a television station licensed to Battle Creek, Michigan, United States, serving West Michigan as an affiliate of ABC and The CW. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Grand Rapids–licensed NBC affiliate WOOD-TV and Class A MyNetworkTV affiliate WXSP-CD. The stations share studios on College Avenue Southeast in Grand Rapids, while WOTV's transmitter is located on South Norris Road in Orangeville Township. WOTV brands itself as ABC 4 West Michigan, based on its channel 4 position on most area cable systems.
Felpausch was a grocery store chain based in Hastings, Michigan, United States. The first store opened in Hastings in 1933, and the chain operated primarily in the southwestern quadrant of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Its 20 locations were sold to Spartan Stores, who largely converted them to Family Fare and D&W Fresh Market.
The Battle Creek Sanitarium was a world-renowned health resort in Battle Creek, Michigan, United States. It started in 1866 on health principles advocated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and from 1876 to 1943 was managed by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.
The following is a list of Registered Historic Places in Calhoun County, Michigan.
This National Park Service list is complete through NPS recent listings posted January 19, 2024.
Bewabic State Park is a public recreation area covering 315 acres (127 ha) on the shore of Fortune Lake, four miles (6.4 km) west of Crystal Falls in Iron County, Michigan. The state park's rich Civilian Conservation Corps history is evidenced by the CCC structures still in use. The park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its CCC-related architecture in 2016.
Fieldstone is a naturally occurring type of stone, which lies at or near the surface of the Earth. Fieldstone is a nuisance for farmers seeking to expand their land under cultivation, but at some point it began to be used as a construction material. Strictly speaking, it is stone collected from the surface of fields where it occurs naturally. Collections of fieldstones which have been removed from arable land or pasture to allow for more effective agriculture are called clearance cairns.
Colon High School is a public high school in northeastern St Joseph County. It serves the residents of Colon, Michigan and the surrounding community including Colon, Leonidas and rural areas. Its high school mascot is the Magi a Rabbit . About its mascot Colon High Schools mascot is the Magi another word for magic. Colon chose this mascot because Colon, Michigan is the magic capital of the world. Every year Colon hosts "Magic Week" where many performers put on displays, skits and magic tricks for the town and surrounding areas. Colon High School won the MHSAA Division 1 2019 state championship in 8-man football.
The Deerwood Auditorium is a community center in Deerwood, Minnesota, United States. It was built as a New Deal project from 1935 to 1937. In 1995 the auditorium was listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its local significance in the themes of architecture, politics/government, and social history. It was nominated for being an exemplary multipurpose municipal building funded by the New Deal, as well as Minnesota's largest project by the State Emergency Relief Administration, and a longstanding venue for community events.
Langley Covered Bridge is the longest remaining wooden covered bridge in the U.S. state of Michigan, and is located three miles north of Centreville, the seat of St. Joseph County. The bridge is located in Lockport Township. The road to get to the bridge borders on the east line of Lockport and Nottawa townships. The bridge crosses the St. Joseph River. The current bridge and causeway opened in 1887. The bridge and causeway make up Covered Bridge Road.
Battle Creek is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan, in northwest Calhoun County, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek rivers. It is the principal city of the Battle Creek, Michigan Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which encompasses all of Calhoun County. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 52,731. Nicknamed "Cereal City", it is best known as the home of WK Kellogg Co and the founding city of Post Consumer Brands.
The US 41–Fanny Hooe Creek Bridge is a highway bridge located on US Highway 41 (US 41) over the Fanny Hooe Creek about one mile east of Copper Harbor, adjacent to Fort Wilkins State Park, in Grant Township, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
Oak Lodge is a historic recreational building, located on the west side of Schreeder Pond in Chatfield Hollow State Park in Killingworth, Connecticut. Built in 1937, it is one of Connecticut's finest examples of construction by crews of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). It, along with Schreeder Pond and other CCC-built park features, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
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Shane Clipfell is the current head coach of the Western Michigan University women's basketball team.