Written by: Colin Staub, Newberg Graphic

Book follows longtime school building that was converted into cultural center

Barbara Doyle knew she liked history, but not necessarily the traditional chronicling of dates and wars — she was interested in the local community happenings through the years.

“To me, this is what moves the world and the population in society,” Doyle said. “It’s not the great big, ‘I conquered another piece of territory! The kingdom is bigger!’ Thinking about where you are and what’s involved is kind of where I was zeroing in.”

The local historian has written exhibits and presentations about Newberg history over the two decades she’s lived in the area, but this month marks the release of her first book.

Doyle had been involved on the committee that was planning the Chehalem Cultural Center for a time in the early 2000s, and when it was set to open she was asked to give a presentation on some of the history of the building as well as the process of transforming it into a cultural institution.

A few years later, when she had finished another project and was trying to decide what she would delve into next, she realized there was more to learn and write about Central School. She took on a longer history project that would turn into her first book, “From Then ’Till Now.”

“To me, it’s kind of like two stories,” Doyle explained, “parallel stories that run together: the development of elementary education in this community and also the building in which it took place.”

Or rather, the “buildings” in which it took place, as the original Central School building was demolished in 1935.

The first phase of the Central School facility was erected in 1889 and it wasn’t long before the school space had doubled. A decade later it doubled again, trying to keep up with the student body demand.

By 1933 or so, Doyle said, with concerns running high of old wooden buildings going up in flames, the conversation turned to Central School as a fire trap.

“There’ll be people who swear up, down, sideways and inside out there was a fire,” Doyle said. “No, there wasn’t. There was great fear of a fire.”

So, the building was taken down in early 1935 and by autumn of that year the new brick structure was operational as a school. Eighty years later it’s still in use, now as the CCC, and the many twists and turns along the way that brought it into its present status are charted in Doyle’s book.

One of the odder facts she uncovered while researching the building was a method that was used to allow more students to attend the school. Even though it had similar dimensions to what it is now, and the bottom floor is above ground, it was classified as a one story building with a basement. With a redefinition of the school building as a two-story structure, that meant more of the space could be utilized and allowed the building to survive as the school.

“If they couldn’t have used the basement, they couldn’t have used the building,” she said. “All of a sudden what couldn’t be used for classrooms could be used for classrooms.”

In researching the book Doyle made use of the Newberg Graphic for historical information — in fact, she said, she read every issue that’s available dating back to 1888.

“Somebody said, ‘Well what are you looking for?’ I don’t know what I’m looking for. If I knew a story I could go to find that, but I don’t know what happened during this 10-year period (or) during this 25-year period,” she said. “So I gotta read it.”

She also sent out requests for information and heard back from former students, many of them sharing fond memories of their time there. In one of the anecdotes a former student wrote her a letter recalling a Valentine’s Day activity he had participated in while attending first grade at Central School in 1968. He’d received a valentine from a girl in class. Thirteen years later, they got married — and still are today.

Doyle’s book also goes into some regional history, talking about the settlement of the Willamette Valley and what led to the local need for an educational facility.

“The school is not an island, it functions in a community; Newberg is not an island, it functions in a larger setting,” she explained.

But through it all the focus is on the piece of land and the buildings that were home to the school, as it’s been a pillar of the Newberg community for more than 120 years.

“If you talk to older people who live around, ‘Oh, Central School!’ It makes them smile,” Doyle said. “This is a really nice story about the memories that people have of that school. And the mere fact that it’s been converted to the cultural center makes a lot of them feel very, very good: ‘My alma mater isn’t a pile of bricks someplace, it’s functioning, it’s a contribution to the community.’”