An abandoned school building from the 19th century reopens its doors to students.
The Garcia Grade School, located in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, was built as early as the 1860s, experts said.
Now the school, which has not been used as a classroom since 1963, is set to house students again, as the local community races to save the building – and others like it – from destruction.
Eerie photos of the school’s exterior and interior captured a different era of learning.
The photos showed crumbling walls with peeling paint, an antique scale and a blackboard with the faded scribbles of a student from decades ago.
The Colorado School was built way back in the 1860s and is one of the last remaining buildings from that era in the area
The Garcia Grade School closed its doors in 1963 and has been vacant for decades
Remnants of the past were visible in the school building, including faint numbers written on a blackboard
Various old items were found in the classrooms, including old books and magazines and even a scale
The school is located in the San Luis Valley, where many Spanish-speaking settlers migrated after the Mexican-American War
On the wall hung a sign that looked like it could be half a century old and read: “Library Now Open.”
Sketches of young students, now probably in their 70s, adorned the walls of some classrooms.
Bookshelves were filled with volumes of old encyclopedias with yellowing pages. Old copies of National Geographic and Time Magazine were discovered in a magazine rack.
Garcia Grade School is a poignant reminder of a bygone era, and its dusty bookshelves and cracked adobe exterior are reminiscent of a time when the city was just a Spanish settlement.
After the Mexican-American War in 1848, Spanish settlers migrated to the San Luis Valley, when the region was still part of the New Mexico Territory.
Many of the buildings from that era have been lost to time and Garcia Grade School is one of the few still standing.
The school’s original mud plaster is still intact and has a lava stone foundation, a common feature of the region’s older buildings.
The bottom layer of the floor has bark on the back, which means it is made from a local tree.
Antique and vintage books lined the shelves of the Garcia school, where the original mud plaster remains
The bottom floor of the school was made from a local tree and old copies of magazines were found on the shelves
Old copies of National Geographic and Time Magazine were found in a magazine rack
Water damage has caused cracks in the walls
Renovators have their work cut out for them: water damage has ravaged the building and animals have burrowed into the foundation
Yet the school is showing clear signs of its age, and it will be difficult to wrest the building from the clutches of time.
In recent decades, animals have burrowed deep into the building’s foundation.
Water damage has damaged the deeper structure, causing the building’s corners to lean outward, posing a major challenge for renovators, who will have to figure out how to protect the daub.
Close to the northern door of the school, the loam is completely missing: a precarious situation that could lead to a collapse.
But all the peeling paint, cavernous ceiling and rickety bookshelves aren’t enough to deter the school’s renovators.
Barbara Darden, an architect leading the building’s renovation, plans to add a unisex and handicapped bathroom to the school.
She is also considering using solar energy to power the building and taking steps to improve the overall appearance of the school.
“The buildings aren’t the most important thing,” Darden said The Colorado sun. “It’s the people and the culture, and the buildings tell that story, help interpret that story of a city or community.”
Meanwhile, Michael Medina, an 89-year-old former student of the school, recalled the publication about having ‘at At least one teacher and maybe two teachers who were very instrumental in us learning how to add, subtract, multiply, how to put a sentence together, which helped a lot later in life.”
