Crow Island School facts for kids
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Crow Island School
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 Location in Illinois
Location in the United States
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| Location | 1112 Willow Road Winnetka, Illinois 60093 |
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| Built | 1940 |
| Architect | Saarinen, Eliel & Eero; Perkins, Wheeler & Will |
| Architectural style | International Style |
| NRHP reference No. | 89001730 |
Quick facts for kids Significant dates |
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| Added to NRHP | October 27, 1989 |
| Designated NHL | December 14, 1990 |
Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois, is a special elementary school for young students. It's famous for two main reasons: its unique way of teaching (called "progressive education") and its modern building style (known as "International Style"). The school building was designed by two groups of architects working together. They were the Chicago firm of Perkins, Wheeler and Will and the famous architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen.
Today, Crow Island School teaches students from kindergarten through fourth grade. It first opened its doors in 1940-41. A very early version of the "jungle gym" was once located here. It was moved to the school in 1940 and later to the Winnetka Historical Society in 2010. The school has won important awards, including the Twenty-five Year Award in 1971. It was also named a National Historic Landmark in 1990, recognizing its importance to history. In 2018, it was chosen as one of the "Illinois 200 Great Places."
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Why Crow Island School is Special
Crow Island School is important because it combined new ideas about teaching with a new style of building.
Progressive Education Ideas
In the 1920s and 1930s, a new way of teaching called "Progressive education" became popular. This idea focused on learning by doing and making school more interesting for students. However, during the Great Depression, there wasn't much money to build new schools. So, many schools couldn't try these new teaching methods.
Carleton Washburne was a leader in progressive education. He was the superintendent of schools in Winnetka, Illinois. He really wanted to build a new school that would use these modern teaching ideas.
A New Style of Architecture
The school building itself was designed in the "International Style" of architecture. This style uses clean lines, flat roofs, and lots of windows. It was one of the first schools in North America built in this modern way. Its look and shape became a model for many schools built later.
Designing the School Building
The design of Crow Island School was a team effort.
Choosing the Architects
The architectural firm of Larry Perkins, Philip Will, Jr., and Todd Wheeler was quite new. This school was one of their first big projects. Larry Perkins' father was a well-known architect who had designed other schools in Winnetka. The Perkins family also knew people on the Winnetka School Board and Superintendent Washburne.
Washburne liked the firm's modern ideas. But he worried they didn't have enough experience. Larry Perkins then suggested they work with the famous architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen. The Saarinens were excited to work on a new and different school project. So, the two firms decided to team up.
Planning the School Layout
The Perkins, Wheeler & Will firm did most of the early design work. They talked to students and teachers to understand what they needed. They even sat in on classes to see how schools worked. The building had to be built for a modest cost of $287,000 in 1940. This would be about $6.16 million today.
The school was built on Crow Island, a high spot in the Skokie Marsh. The swampy area was filled in with dirt from nearby construction projects. These projects included the Skokie Lagoons Project and a railway track project. Experts helped design the school grounds to look like a park.
Unique Features of the Design
The school has a central building with common rooms. From this center, four wings stretch out. This design allows each classroom to have its own outdoor courtyard. Each wing also has its own playground. Two of these playgrounds even had early, experimental versions of a jungle gym. The Saarinens designed a special hexagon-shaped sandbox for one of the wings.
The main entrance is on the west side, under a chimney overhang. There's also a separate entrance for the kindergarten on the east side. The building is one story tall and has a flat roof. A tall, 50-foot (15 m) chimney rises from the north side, almost like a "fifth wing" reaching up.
After the school was built, Perkins & Will used their profits to hire photographers to take pictures of the building. This firm went on to design more than five hundred schools after Crow Island.
Images for kids
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Crow Island School building
