THE UNTOUCHED SCHOOL

by Jacob Shron

“As a student, I loved it,” says Mrs. Kinne, a former Searles student and paraprofessional. She continues, “because we were a small class, we did a lot together, and everyone knew everyone and cared about each other.” Kinne attended the school as a student and returned years later to work as a para. Once a small school right in the center of Great Barrington teaching a few hundred students, the Searles School is now graffiti-covered inside and out and crumbling into itself, lying dormant. There have been multiple attempts since its 2004 closing to revitalize the abandoned building and create something new out of it, but the question still remains: will it stay just a rejected and deserted building for many years to come? Or will a new, active space be created?
The Searles School was opened as a middle and high school, teaching students from the grades seven to twelve. The school was opened by the Searles family in 1898 and the building, built on Bridge Street in Great Barrington was widely admired at the time for its impressive architecture. However, as more students enrolled, the building was rapidly approaching its capacity and a new building was needed.
The new high school, Monument Mountain Regional High School, opened in 1968 and was a welcome new addition for the school district. All the high school students from Searles transitioned to the new high school, and the Searles school transitioned to solely a middle school. The Searles school remained a middle school for the rest of its life while the building began to deteriorate.
The school continued to be a middle school for decades, and the more than a hundred-year-old building began to show its age. There was no A.C., the furniture was falling apart, and the classroom materials were all outdated. People knew these problems needed to be solved, and proposals were made in the early 2000s to construct a new middle school. Many of them were controversial because of their high prices, but eventually, a school was planned to be built right near the high school and was completed by 2004. Kinne recalls having a bittersweet feeling moving to the new school, “it was nice coming into a new building and having everything new and modern, but I still would rather go back to the old building and have the feeling that was there.” The students, however, were thrilled. According to Kinne, “the kids liked it because, of course, everything was new and there was a lot more for them.” But ever since all of the Searles students moved to the new middle school, the building has been left mostly untouched.
As the old Searles School still sits abandoned on Bridge Street, some efforts have been made to turn the old building into something new. One of the most notable of these efforts is one to turn the building into an upscale hotel. The plan, proposed by Great Barrington local, Vijay Mahida, wants to build a four-star, 88 room hotel in the former school. This plan has proved controversial, many saying that the school needs to be preserved due to its historical value, or that it will cost too much, while others say that it will bring in money for the town and restore the rundown building. Kinne says she would like to see the building used for other purposes, “I think it’s great. I hate to see buildings just sitting there and falling down, and I’d like to see tax money coming into the town.” While Mahida’s plans have been approved, he is required to remove any important artifacts before continuing with construction. Progress has been slow on Bridge Street so far, so it’s still unknown when a new hotel will be seen in Great Barrington.