The former Lincoln School, now the East Range Developmental Achievement Center. Photo by Mary Ellen Higgins.

Eveleth’s Lincoln School building has been a neighborhood and city landmark for over a century. Although it no longer functions as a school, as the East Range Developmental Achievement Center it continues to serve the greater community by employing adults with disabilities. This page is a revised and abridged version of a series of Hometown Focus articles written in 2012 by Tucker Nelson. We hope the stories of former students will remind you of your own childhood and school days, whether at the Lincoln or any other school.

BUILDING HISTORY

At the turn of the 20th century, the Eveleth School District had erected three schools within ten years for the north side of town alone. The Adams Kindergarten was built west of present-day Northside Park circa 1903. The three-room frame building held kindergarten students and some first grade classes. Next came the more substantial Adams School, built in 1908 on the corner of McKinley Avenue and Cleveland Street. The brick schoolhouse had six classrooms and cost $42,500. The Adams School quickly overcrowded, prompting the Eveleth School Board to plan a larger school next to the Adams.

In early 1912, the School Board held an essay contest to let students choose the name of the new school. The February 29, 1912, edition of the Eveleth News reported Hugo Newberg, Axel Brandt, and Salina Saari won first, second, and third places, respectively—their prize money totaled six dollars. The winning contestants all selected the name “Lincoln,” which broke the former practice of naming schools after the mining locations in which they were situated (Spruce, Fayal, and Adams) and honored an important historical figure.

Contracts for the new Lincoln School were let in April 1912. The School Board hired Duluth architects William T. Bray and Carl E. Nystrom to design the building and the Bailey-Marsh Company of Minneapolis as general contractor. Construction on the $75,000 building progressed rapidly, and classes began at Lincoln on January 6, 1913.

​The Lincoln School’s exterior is a simple form of Elizabethan architecture. The building has a stone foundation, limestone trim around the main doors, and red Afghan bricks matched the Lincoln Annex. Projecting from the south wall is a central bay containing a stairwell ending at the former principal’s office. The 1915 Eveleth High School yearbook said the Lincoln School’s interior had “terrazzo floors in the halls, an air moistener, patent coat hangers, and steel adjustable seats arranged on the arcs of circles.” Other features included pressed metal ceilings, sanitary drinking fountains, hardwood classroom floors, and vacuums to clean chalkboard erasers. The school’s twelve classrooms were situated around a central hallway on each floor.

A postcard showing Eveleth's school buildings, circa 1912. The Lincoln is top center; the Lincoln Annex, top right.

This plaque still hangs in the vestibule of the former Lincoln School.

Eveleth News, January 9, 1913

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OF THE LINCOLN SCHOOL

Mayme Coombe
I spoke with lifelong Eveleth resident Mayme Coombe in August 2012 about her life growing up in an immigrant family, specifically her fond recollections of her school days. I was fortunate to have met her and to have heard her stories before she passed away in December 2012.

Mayme was so eager to start school in September 1922, but the Lincoln School’s principal said Mayme was too young. “I cried, and I cried, and I cried,” Mayme said, “but I got over it.” She returned four months later as a mid-year student, which meant she graduated high school in January 1935.

If the weather was poor in the morning, a sign saying “come in” hung on the main door; otherwise, children waited outside until the bell rang. Each class lined up at the door, and a teacher played an upbeat tune on a piano as students marched in step to their classroom.

Mayme’s kindergarten classroom was on the first floor. She alternated between the Lincoln and Lincoln Annex through sixth grade. “Both schools were full. It was a busy place—lots of kids, lots of noise.”

In an era when Iron Rangers’ ethnic backgrounds were not as mixed as they have become, most of Mayme’s classmates were first-generation Americans. “All these kids came to school, and each spoke their mother’s language. The teachers must have had a hard time—imagine! The older people had to learn the English language because the kids came home from school talking English.”

Stronger ethnic identities occasionally led to conflicts, even among children, according to Mayme: “When there was a fight, they called them ‘You Dago! You Bohunk! You Swede!'” Some children made fun of a Jewish boy named Philip Cohen, but Mayme had a crush on him in grade school.

Mayme remembered only one mean teacher and one mean classmate. “The other kids minded; they might have been loud, you know … but they weren’t like this kid.” The boy she spoke of enjoyed fighting with his teacher when he was sent to the cloakroom as punishment. He even brought one teacher to tears, but he “turned out okay.” The principal’s office was on the third floor directly above the main entrance, and students were proud when chosen to deliver something to her.

Students at the Lincoln School had no shortage of recreation. The lot had a boys’ and a girls’ skating rink, large playgrounds, and sandboxes. Mayme heard the playground had had a swing set that was removed after a boy fell off the swings and died. The younger children weren’t allowed on the grass, and when they got older, they could play on the larger playground higher up the hill. “We always had recess,” Mayme said. “The kids need recess so they can go out and play and run.” Lunch recess was an hour long, and most students walked home for lunch. Mayme’s mother often saw boys on their way to and from home scrambling down the steep embankment between North and South Courts.

In the summertime, local children went to “summer school,” where they did handwork, read books, and performed skits outdoors. Students even went to what Mayme called “night school” from four to eight in the evening. “I don’t know why it was that way. … We thought it was wonderful that we went to school at night.” (She was most possibly recalling Americanization classes the Eveleth schools offered at that time.)

Every year, the Lincoln had Christmas programs in the central hallway for parents. In 1915, the Eveleth schools began offering public baths at the Lincoln and Fayal Schools. Bathers needed to bring their own towels and soaps. Mayme did not mention this service, but the baths are another example of the school district providing for its community members.

There were four grade schools in Eveleth in the 1920s and ’30s: the Lincoln and the Annex, the Fayal, and the Franklin. Franklin, built in 1922, was a school for students who took a bus, including those who lived on Adams and Spruce Hills. It also held art, music, and girls’ vocational classes. The Spruce School, built south of Carrie Avenue circa 1896, closed around 1925. It had become dilapidated, and kids even thought the wooden building was haunted.

The grade schools held a Field Day every year. Students raced against the other schools at the ballpark near the water tower. “We had cheerleaders with pom-poms,” Mayme recalled, “and we had to cheer for our school; that was a big thing.” The kids also did the Maypole dance, but “they got all mixed up. I don’t think they ever got it right.”

Mayme couldn’t reiterate enough how much she loved school. “I think we had a good, good education. It was just a happy place to go every day. I loved school; I loved it all the way through.”

Rose Okorn
Rose Okorn was not as excited to start school as Mayme had been. Rose hid behind the wood stove in her family’s home on North Court on her first day of school. “I had a tantrum and said ‘I won’t go to school,’ but once I got there, I really liked it. I remember that as if it was yesterday.”

Rose was intimidated by Miss Paulson, the principal, whom Mayme said was strict, “but you had to be with all those kids in there.” Rose visited the old school after it had closed and walked up to the former principal’s office on the third floor. “My knees were shaking just as if I was in school again!”

Rose said students at the two schoolhouses could hear the interurban street cars of the Mesaba Electric Railway just down the hill. The trains rolled down Adams Avenue, along the embankment between North and South Courts, and followed the old highway to Virginia. Rose also recalls playing as a child in the passengers’ shelter on the end of North Court.

Rose attended the Lincoln Annex in the fourth grade. “It was a beautiful old building. It had a wide staircase, maybe eight feet wide. I was really sad when it was torn down.” Her teacher, Miss Flora West, gave all of her students a gift at the end of the school year: a china Mae West doll for the girls, a paddle ball for the boys. Rose still [as of 2012] has her doll, now over eighty years old.

Miss Woods’ 1939 kindergarten class. Pictured are June (possibly) Collins, John and Jim Mayasich, Frank Rainaldi, Jim Mudge, and Ron Peterlin. Photo courtesy of John Mayasich.

John & Jim Mayasich
The Mayasich brothers grew up on Summit Street and fondly remember time spent playing near the school. “I think more than anything that the memories are more about the playground and the school being sort of a meeting place for us,” John said. Children living on Summit, Clay, and Harrison Streets gathered at the school to run, throw tennis balls, and play with rubber guns. The city Recreation Department sponsored summer activities at the large playgrounds around the schools. “We used to spend the summers up there playing softball, bocce ball, and paddle ball. So it wasn’t just the Lincoln School itself; it was the whole property.”

In the winter, the boys played King of the Hill beside Harrison Street after returning from lunch. One day, after an altercation during recess, an older, larger boy followed John to his house after school. “I think I wrestled him to the ground … but it scared the Hell out of me!”

John remembers teachers such as Miss Woods, Miss Laituri, and Miss Sipola, and the programs students put on for their parents. He also recalls the winter days spent at the skating rinks by the school. “[The school] provided me with everything I needed to advance and improve, and it certainly opened up the sports world to me. So it was special, to me and a lot of kids.”

John’s brother Jim was both a student and a teacher at the Lincoln. After graduating from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, he started teaching sixth grade in 1958. Mr. Mayasich thinks he was the second male teacher at the Lincoln; he also served as the physical education teacher. He said, “Most of the other faculty was quite old and mostly all women, so the kids kinda liked [the phys.ed. class.]”

Into the 1960s, teachers still played the piano every morning as the students marched in. Lunch still lasted from noon to one, just as it had when Mayme, Rose, and the Mayasich brothers were young. “It was a good place to play; we had a good playground area. We always had good teachers. I really enjoyed it; it was a nice place to teach.” Jim taught at the Eveleth Junior High for a few years after the Lincoln closed, and finished his career at Franklin Elementary.

"1st row: Louise Proznick, Margeret Kokaly, Tommy Nankeris, Bruce shutte, Leslie Emery ("Billie Ceryance was in my room but was absent.") 2nd row: Donald Kanyon, Donald Kokal, Frencesca Paciotti, Dolores Settimi, Elizabeth Hendrickson, Marion Haina, Leo Gams, Edwin Olson; back row: Roland Hedman, Edward Smoke, James Johnston, Billy Kochevar, Dwayne Erickson, Robert Hallstrom. Photo courtesy of Louise Proznick.

1940s Lincoln School class, with the Lincoln Annex in the background. Courtesy of Ron Settimi.

​Kathy Madzey
Kathy Madzey’s kindergarten teacher was Miss Capitanelli, whose classroom had a toy kitchen and dolls with buggies. During music time, Miss Pat would play her autoharp. Youngsters brought their own mats for naps, after which “everyone was given a chance to wake everyone up” with “a wand or something.” Mrs. DeRosier, Mrs. Dobbs, Mrs. Bradt, Mr. Baski, Mr. McKenzie, and Miss Kaye were Kathy’s teachers for first through sixth grade. In Mrs. Bradt’s third grade class, “everyone wanted to be picked to clean off the chalkboard and erasers.”

Demolition of the Lincoln Annex, formerly the Adams School, in 1951. Photo by Sally Shea Martin.

THE SCHOOL BELLS FALL SILENT

When Mayme Coombe started Kindergarten, the Eveleth School District enrolled nearly 3000 pupils in nine buildings. As the city’s population declined, and school enrollment consequently dropped. The Lincoln Annex closed in June 1939 and was demolished in 1951, enlarging the Lincoln School playground. The Fayal School closed in 1947, leaving just Franklin and Lincoln. (According to former Franklin student Sharon Strle, her classmates affectionately called the smaller school the “Stinkin’ Lincoln.”)

The Eveleth School Board voted to close the Lincoln School in 1972. In contrast to parental outcry over closing the Fayal School, the Lincoln was retired quietly. According to Jim Mayasich, “There was no hoopla or anything. It just closed, that’s all.”

The ERDAC gift shop on the second floor of the former Lincoln School.

That same year, the East Range Day Activity Center approached the School Board expressing interest in using the empty school. The DAC taught life skills and nurtured physical and emotional well-being for people with intellectual disabilities. The center opened in 1966 leasing the basement of the Eveleth Public Library. As the program grew, it needed space to accommodate more students. The DAC used two floors of the Lincoln School for three years before buying the building for just $1 in 1975. 

The Lincoln’s story could have ended there, but the DAC decided to renovate and remodel instead after plans were made to demolish the old structure. With the title on the building secured, the students were transferred to the McKinley School while the Lincoln building was retrofitted. When the new East Range Developmental Achievement Center opened in its permanent home on February 29, 1976, it had sixty-seven program participants. Lieutenant Governor Rudy Perpich performed the ribbon cutting at the ceremony.

Current [in 2012] DAC Executive Director Dale Gilbertson says he staff and employees are very happy with the decision to keep the building. “There were times when we thought it would be nice to have a one-level building, not a school building. Some people have a hard time understanding that we have adults that come here, not students; they’re not children in adult bodies.” Even though there are about one hundred people in the building at any given time, it remains very quiet. “Individual areas are a huge benefit. We have the advantage of being in a school building, so we can have all the separate rooms for workshops, painting, rug-making, and things like that.” 
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Even though the building has been remodeled to suit the center’s needs, its original features have been extremely well preserved. The gift shop and offices on the first floor have changed the most, but former classrooms on the second floor retain metal ceilings, hardwood floors, chalkboards, and even rotary-dial telephones. Several areas in the building appear almost exactly as they would have in 1912. The Eveleth Heritage Society gave its annual preservation award to the East Range DAC for maintaining the former Lincoln School, a building that continues proudly serving the Eveleth community.

ERDAC workers varnishing a chair to be sold in the gift shop.

ERDAC workers in the rug room, a former classroom on the third floor.

Additional Lincoln School history

Read more about the Lincoln School's students and staff in this three-part series of Hometown Focus articles by 1972 Eveleth High School graduate Jim Froemming.
https://www.hometownfocus.us/articles/elementary-schools-throughout-the-history-of-eveleth/
www.hometownfocus.us/articles/part-two-of-the-lincoln-elementary-school-series-memories-from-three-former-lincoln-school-students/
https://www.hometownfocus.us/articles/part-three-of-the-lincoln-elementary-school-series-mrs-louise-campbell-lincoln-school-first-grade-teacher/