Did You Attend Carleton Elementary?

[grumpyoldlady]

Are you familiar with the room behind the auditorium stage? Well, the end of it had a door that opened into the hallway near the office, and the Lost and Found table was set up there and the door opened a couple of days a week so students could look for their lost stuff. It was manned by a "Future Teacher" student.

I really liked those big semi-circular granite wash sinks in the lavatories that had that rubber rail on the bottom that you stepped on to make the water come out. We used to take paper towel and plug up the drain and see how full we could get it before an adult came in. Those things were big enough to take a bath in!

One thing I can't remember for anything. Once when they were painting one of my classrooms, the teacher took us upstairs to the room used for Band. I can't remember how we got there, or if it was accessible from the main hallways on the second floor. It was a little tiny room, NOT the one used for Speech which was in between two other rooms,...this room was on a corner.

[EMG]

I remember the Speech room 208 located in between Ms. Van Ryn's room 209 and Mr. Dyer-Hurdon's room 210 very well as I took speech classes with Mrs. Grant there for some time.

I had forgotten the Band room, but now that you mention it I think I do remember. It was up in the corner somewhere between the Lakepoint Door stairwell and room 211, right? Like you, I might have seen it once and if we are indeed thinking of the same room, I'm sure it was accessed through a regular door from the hallway [[obviously we didn't climb up through a trap door using the rope from Gym!) but perhaps the door didn't have a window like most classrooms and/or we used it so seldom we were more inclined to assume it was the door to a closet than a classroom. It's amazing how one can attend school in the same building for almost a decade, yet have so little or no exposure to a particular area or room that just to have the opportunity to enter it once becomes the memorable event of a lifetime! That's why I enjoyed those air raid drills so much. I would have loved to have been able to just explore the whole basement without being limited to just a single space marked for my own class! Or even some of those lesser-accessed regular rooms upstairs for that matter!

As for the restrooms, you have confirmed for me then that the girls' rooms were fairly similar to the boys' rooms! We had exactly the same sinks you describe. Though given what I'm sure some of the boys no doubt used those sinks for, I wouldn't recommend attempting to take a bath in them!

I vaguely remember lost and found items being put out on a table...but now that you mention it I do remember having occasional opportunities to look for stuff. And thank you for mentioning the "Future Teachers." I had forgotten all about them. Didn't they have special arm bands or patches that they wore?

I honestly don't remember that side door into the Auditorium stage. But from the pictures I posted of the Office hallway in the other thread, I can certainly at least better picture it. Once again, how limited we were within a building we attended for so many years - to have doors that we walked by on a daily basis without knowing exactly what was behind them!

[EMG]

Or - wait a minute - now I'm really not sure about that band room anymore. Could it be that it was up above the Roxbury Door area - perhaps above the gym and/or auditorium? I'm really not sure at all about this now - whether the following is a real memory or something manufactured - but what I do remember was real was that to the east side of the gym, there was a side room with some lockers. Students wouldn't actually change clothes, but would change just SHOES from street shoes to gym shoes, which were kept in the lockers in that room to the east of the gym. I don't believe that there was a regular staircase at the Roxbury door directly accessible from the halls that students regularly used between classes, like the West Casino staircase or the Lakepoint staircase, but I'm sure that for fire regulation purposes there must have been another staircase near Roxbury. Could it be that that staircase was accessible from the "locker room" or was simply a "hidden behind a door" staircase somewhere in the general area of the east side of the gym, that then led up to just a one-room nook [[that is to say, band room) in the northeast corner of the building on the second floor?

[[I'm now thinking that random thought I had about "climbing the rope up from the gym" wasn't just a random joke but originated in the fiber of an actual memory....)

[Norwalk]

My Brother in Law currently teaches at Carleton and has for the past 10 years at least.

[grumpyoldlady]

EMG....Yes....I believe the band room was on the Roxbury side. That small room off the gym had the teacher's desks in it, and a cot for ill students to lay down on. I do believe there were a couple of lockers in there. It wasn't normally accessed by students unless they needed to use the cot.

Norwalk.....PLEASE ask your brother-in-law where the access to the band room we speak of is located. It may not be used for band any more.

I just looked at my Carleton photos and if you look at the photo of the Roxbury entrance, the 3 windows to the right of the door, or at least the top two, were in that band room....I think, lol.

[EMG]

I don't remember there being a cot in there when I went there. I would have thought anyone ill would simply have been sent to the office to wait for family to pick them up and take them home [[back in those days it wasn't nearly as common to have both parents working!!!)

"To the left right of the Roxbury door?" So which was it? I think it would have to have been to the right, making it north of the Roxbury door. If I'm right, then the band room was up over that east-of-the-gym, north-of-the-Roxbury-door area, and if so there must have been a staircase originating at or near that locker/cot room that went up there. If on the other hand it was to the left, that would have put the band room over the auditorium, which I REALLY don't think it was.

UNLESS....there was an overhead projector room over the rear of the auditorium [[as commonly seen in movie theatres), in which case such a room would logically have been connected to the band room if there was one in that area. But as I'm reasonably sure that movies, if any, which were shown in the auditorium were shown from reel-to-reel projectors on carts on the aisle of the auditorium, I don't think that was the case. I really think the band room was on the second floor, over the gym locker room and to the north.

This is now starting to sound like a game of Clue. Can anyone prove me wrong?

[grumpyoldlady]

Yes, I meant to the RIGHT of the door.

I am part of a group that is planning a reunion for the June '63 class. A letter was sent to the principal requesting a tour of the building, but there has been no response. If the tour does happen, although I won't be able to go, I will ask someone to clarify the location of the old band room.

You are right...there was no projection room. The movie projector sat on a cart near the rear of the auditorium...in the middle where some seats were missing if I recall correctly.