10/25/2017
Day 1: The First Ward Schoolhouse in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin (Wood Co.) Please feel free to share this image and the accompanying story.
In the late 1800s, public schools in the Wisconsin Rapids area (then Centralia) were fantastically overcrowded. This lead the Board of Education to decide to construct a new building on the opposite side of the city, in order to accommodate children throughout Centralia. The land on which the school was built was purchased by a Peter Dessaint for $600, and a plan for the structure was drawn up by H.J. Van Ryan of Milwaukee for $240. House and Nelson Construction constructed the building for $7,194. The seating and additional furnishings came from Manitowoc for $433, and Centralia Hardware installed the plumbing for $236.95 and gifted the school a $6.00 clock as well as an additional $3.50 toward the improvement of the classrooms, to be used at the discretion of the teachers. The school was completed in 1896, and contained four large classrooms, heated by a huge coal furnace. It had all of the latest technology, including electricity, adjustable seats, the best blackboards available at the time, and Venetian blinds. The First Ward School is the oldest surviving school building in Wisconsin Rapids today. It hosted Kindergarten through 6th Grade, and several high-school level classrooms. Physical Education was taught by the custodian in the coal room.
In 1902 the pupils and teachers were told to choose an official name for the First Ward School. It was decided to name the school Irving Schoolhouse after the author Washington Irving, who was very popular at the time. The school was closed in 1910 due to low attendance as well as lightning strike, due to which repairs would be costly.
In 1921, the Centralia area saw a sudden population increase, which lead to the school being reopened to Kindergarten through 3rd Grades. This was done by the local nuns who undertook teaching at the school themselves while living in the attic of the building (which is why the attic doors lock from the inside.) This helped to keep the cost of running the school manageable, so that the leftover funds could be put into things such as classroom improvements and renovation. This is about the period from which stories of the school being haunted originated from. While living in the school the nuns noticed strange things happening in different at different times of day. This lead the nuns to come up with a plan as to when and where they would not go in the school during these times of unexplained activity. It seems that the nuns were the first to investigate the activity in this building, and kept a log (which has sadly been lost to time) when and where activity took place.
There are many local tales of the schoolhouse being haunted. Many of the stories revolve around a little boy named Oscar, who is said to have died in the schoolhouse under mysterious circumstances in the 1900s. People report hearing voices and the sounds of school desks being moved around, despite the fact that no school desks remain in the building. A shadow person is also reportedly seen in the basement, and a hellhound (a demonic canid figure) stalks the grounds alongside specters of children at play.
In 1924 the roof of the school caught fire. The janitor noticed the fire as he walked home on his lunch break. All of the children exited the building safely, and the damages were easily reparable.
Sometime before World War II, the building was used as a small school for the deaf, founded by Agnes Mader. It hosted the city's first special education classes, taught by Allie Marie C**n. The additional teachers at the school remained there throughout this time period: Muriel Holliday, Joyce Pettis, Elaine Domask, and Ina Iverson Peterson.
In 1954 the interior of the school was remodeled. A kitchen and cafeteria was added, the bathrooms were taken out of the basement and moved upstairs, and the coal furnace was converted to gas. The modern cafeteria doubled as the school's gymnasium. The school's last year of regular operation was 1977. For the following two years, the building was used for education offices and occasionally housed college-level classes. The building has remained vacant since 1979.
