Ankeny property owner doesn't plan to restore historic 1-room Nagle School. Will it be lost?

The owner of a historic one-room schoolhouse in Ankeny — a link to Polk County's rural past — has no plans to restore the deteriorating structure while listing the property for sale.

For decades, in what was once the countryside of Crocker Township, students walked to the Nagle School, 2715 S.W. Oralabor Road. It was built around 1900.

The Nagle was one of more than 12,000 one-room schoolhouses in Iowa before the small rural schools consolidated into larger districts, according to the Iowa Department of Education.

The Nagle district folded into the Ankeny district in 1952 and was a family's private home by 1957. Iowa's last one-room schoolhouses closed their doors in 1967.

Today, just a handful of the old schoolhouses remain standing in the Des Moines area, according to a map from the historic preservation group Iowa's Rural Schools. They include the Bennett School Museum in West Des Moines, the former Pleasant Corners School in Des Moines' Union Park neighborhood and some schools that were converted into homes in eastern Polk County.

The Nagle School, now surrounded by suburban development on Ankeny's southwest corner, could be in danger. Windows have been broken out, the door appears to have been kicked in and Fairmount Education, the property's owner, calls the building "dilapidated."

"It's really, truly on the brink of being unsaveable," said Megan Schmelzer, who runs the Little White Schoolhouse tutoring and learning center in Ankeny and has eyed restoring the Nagle building back to what it once was.

What is the history of Ankeny's Nagle School?

According to Polk County records, the red-brick Nagle School was built in 1900, though decades-old newspaper articles suggest an earlier year. The namesake Nagle family still has descendants in the area.

One-room schoolhouses, which functioned as independent school districts and typically educated students through the eighth grade, dotted Iowa's rural landscape into the 20th century. The Nagle School was one of several rural schoolhouses near Ankeny.

The Nagle has appeared in the Des Moines Register and the Des Moines Tribune newspaper archives over the decades. Among the articles: The school closed in May 1907 because of smallpox fears; Orville and Gladys Nagle had perfect attendance in 1922; a PTA was formed around 1931.

Arnold, Lola, Sally and Floyd walked past massive walls of snow to get to class in a 1947 photo, while a 1949 school carnival featured square dancing, fish ponds and other events.

By the 1950s, as communities urbanized, an Iowa law required all school districts to teach kindergarten through 12th grade, meaning each district needed to have a high school, according to Iowa PBS. Rural schoolhouses started folding into town-based districts.

In 1952, the Nagle School became a part of the Ankeny district, and the district later sold the school at auction, according to a 1957 article in the Tribune.

More: Ankeny's Neveln building, the city's most historic, reborn as new school district offices

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Old Ankeny schoolhouse becomes 'modern living quarters'

The article details how, around 1954, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Pearson were living in Des Moines and looking for a new home where they could "escape the city hubbub" and have room for their son, Kelly, to have a pony.

The Pearsons, who also ran a cafe in Ankeny, bought the building and the grounds for $4,000 and hired a contractor to turn the "barn-like" interior into "modern living quarters," with a living room, a dining room, two bedrooms, a gas furnace, up-to-date decor and a new, all-weather enclosed porch. (The porch is no longer there.)

The Pearsons, who were receiving Des Moines water service, kept the water pump for decoration. The old red bricks were repainted a bright white.

By the 1990s, the property was used by Warren Transport, a trucking company, and the rapidly growing city of Ankeny annexed the land into its city limits in 1994. Housing developments then sprouted up around the building in the early 2000s.

The schoolhouse is still standing, accessible from a service road off Oralabor Road. The Oralabor Gateway Trail passes just to the north, and a Git N Go gas station sits to the west. Crocker Elementary School, built in 2004, is to the south and serves about 450 students. The Nagle School recorded just 30 students in the 1914-15 school year.

More: Group seeks information about one-room schools in Washington Township

Tutoring center founder envisions turning Nagle back into a school

Schmelzer said she has always had a fascination for old schoolhouses — they often served as the center of the community — and how a single teacher could help students of all levels. She was a teacher in public schools for years. After suffering a traumatic brain injury from a fall in 2020, she shifted out of the traditional classroom and opened the Little White Schoolhouse tutoring center, 1255 N. Ankeny Blvd.

She strives to honor the inclusive spirit of the old one-room schoolhouse with her own Little White Schoolhouse and pays tribute to the Nagle School's history, with traditions like an end-of-year ice cream social.

More: Ankeny's historic Uptown neighborhood sees surge of development as RAGBRAI heads to town

The Nagle School is two blocks from Schmelzer's home, and she has driven past the brick building for years. She envisions buying the Nagle and turning it into the headquarters for the Little White Schoolhouse Foundation, the nonprofit arm that aims to eliminate educational barriers for individuals and groups in need of support, including children who have special needs and adults who are improving their reading skills.

A larger project could include building a new school with an inclusive playground on the land behind the Nagle. But there's one major barrier to Schmelzer's dream: the property's price tag of $1.4 million.

Property owner has no plans to restore the Nagle School

Fairmount Education, a nonprofit organization, bought the Nagle School property from Warren Transport in 2019, according to county property records.

According to state business records, Fairmount also uses the name One School Global — DSM, part of a Christian network of over 120 schools in 20 countries, including one on the old Adams Elementary site on East 29th Street in Des Moines.

More: Des Moines plans new elementary on northeast side near former Adams, Douglas schools

The Nagle property is now listed for $1.41 million as commercial land off a major intersection. The area is outlined in city planning documents for smaller-scale neighborhood commercial use, such as a drugstore or a coffee shop. Fairmount does not plan to restore the building.

"Fairmount Education purchased the property located at 2715 SW Oralabor Road in June of 2019 with the idea that the property would be suitable for future development for our own use," a spokesperson for Fairmount said in a statement. "After exploring possible educational uses of the site, Fairmount Education has no future plans for the Oralabor Road property, which is now listed for sale.

"Regarding the structure on it, it is known that it once was a school facility over 100 years ago and later was used as a temporary office by subsequent owners," the statement said. "It has since been vandalized and is in very poor condition.  Due to uncertain structural integrity and its dilapidated condition, we have no plans to restore the building prior to any sale."

City looked into preserving the Nagle School

Derek Lord, Ankeny's economic development director, told the Register that the city would love to see the Nagle School preserved and has evaluated the possibility. Officials considered whether the city might have a use for the building, looked into partnering with the private sector and tried to help facilitate relocating it.

However, Lord said, the city does not have a use for the building, and other plans have not, in the end, come together. One major hurdle is the high cost of the relocation itself, given the brick structure, alongside the costs that would come with buying new land, hooking up utilities and making necessary renovations to the century-plus-old building.

The city is still willing to help however it can, Lord said, though there are currently no plans for preservation.

The Nagle School regularly comes up on community pages and historical discussion threads on Facebook, and other users have mused about buying the site and turning it into a day care or an ice cream shop. Meanwhile, Schmelzer has been dismayed to see the condition of an Ankeny historical landmark deteriorate.

"It's at the point now where we're going to lose it," Schmelzer said.

Chris Higgins covers the eastern suburbs for the Register. Reach him at chiggins@registermedia.com or 515-423-5146 and follow him on Twitter @chris_higgins_.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Historic Iowa one-room schoolhouse, link to rural past, could be lost