Question: Take a good look at this photo. Do you know its location? Obviously there had been a fire. What burned and in what year? Some of the buildings in the background still exist — that should help.

Last week’s answer: The headline in the Messenger on August 23, 1962, was “At Last… All School Pupils In School Buildings! First Time Since 1949 Centralization!”

This was especially significant since, in June 1949, the schools in Baldwinsville and the towns of Lysander and Van Buren and one in the town of Clay (Belgium) became one district. This meant that ,instead of each school being run separately, they would now be under one board of education. At least 28 school districts were affected by this ruling.

After centralization, most of the smaller rural schools closed their doors and students were bused to the larger school left open. This caused a rapid increase in school registration and the district did not have enough room to house the students. Since the district could not build classrooms fast enough, they went out into the community for the necessary space. Students went to school in the Odd Fellows Temple, the Episcopal Church and Parish House, the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian Churches. Some of the students even went to school in the original school bus garage and the wood shed of a house once located to the east of the Presbyterian Church on Elizabeth Street. The original Academy was also still in use. At that time there were two additions on the back of what remains today. The remaining part now houses the Word of Life Christian School.

By 1954, the Baldwinsville Academy and Central School (since 1963 known as Charles W. Baker High School) on Oneida Street was completed. The first year it opened, it also housed part of the district’s elementary students.

Van Buren Elementary School on Ford Street opened in 1955 and was followed in 1957 by the Harry E. Elden Elementary School on the Oneida Street school campus. Theodore R. Durgee Junior High, also on the Oneida Street campus, was opened in 1960. Two elementary schools, L. Pearl Palmer Elementary School on Hicks Road and Catherine McNamara Elementary School on O’Brien Road, opened in 1962.

Two of the older school buildings, Plainville and Lysander, were still in use but the fact was that all students were in official school classrooms.

Our two remaining buildings opened later: Mae E. Reynolds Elementary School on Idlewood Boulevard in Village Green opened in 1966-67 and our other building, Donald S. Ray Middle School, opened in 1976.

David Bender called in with the correct response this week. Bender also started his 33-year career teaching chemistry in September of 1962.

Contact Editor Sarah Hall at [email protected] or leave a message at 434-8889 ext. 310 with your guess by 5 p.m. Friday (please leave the information in the message; we are not generally able to return calls regarding History Mystery responses). If you are the first person to correctly identify an element in the photo before the deadline, your name and guess will appear in next week’s Messenger, along with another History Mystery feature. History Mystery is a joint project of the Museum at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse and the Baldwinsville Public Library.