What the Arden School can teach us: hard lessons in community building
Date
2004
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The first Arden School was completed in 1924. That school gradually deteriorated and, then, burned down on Saturday, March 10, 1945. A new Arden School was opened in 1946. As a result of the consolidation of public education, the Arden School was closed in 1969 and then used as a public kindergarten until 1973. For the next twenty years, the building was rented to the Wilmington Montessori School. In 1993, the Montessori School moved to a new facility. The building had slowly established itself as a community center. The Arden School has been at the center of many of the challenges that the experimental Single Tax in Arden, Delaware, has faced: educational controversies, fiscal crises, and apathy are a few. All seemed to loom as threats to Arden's community life at the time. Against all odds, the community and the Arden School, now the Buzz Ware Village Center, has endured. The history of the school is told using extensive school and town records located in the Arden Archives, the Historical Society of Delaware, the Public Archives of Delaware, and private collections. Oral interviews with former students, parents, and teachers from the old Arden School and the new Arden School are included. The paper incorporates the thinking of architectural historians who see buildings as more than bricks and stucco, but as organic structures that can evolve and breathe life into their communities. Because the village evolved with a history of community decision-making, institutions were in place or could be created to address the ever-changing needs of the community and the needs of the building.