Norfolk Then…

Norfolk’s first consolidated school was the Center School, built in 1914. It stood just north of the intersection of Greenwoods and Shepard Roads, where Meadowbrook Senior Housing was later built. Designed by Ehrick Rossiter, architect of the Music Shed and several school buildings on the Hotchkiss School campus, Center School accommodated children in kindergarten through eighth grades. It had eight spacious classrooms, a teachers’ room, lavatories, a book room and a large playroom. Children who had attended one-room schoolhouses in outlying areas of town were bussed to Center School. Pictured here is the third and fourth grade class in 1940.

—Ann Havemeyer