Farewell to the Franklin

EVELETH—Soon the Franklin School will be no more.

The 103-year-old brick school is scheduled for demolition, as are other buildings on the Eveleth campus. Schools in Gilbert and Virginia have already been razed, and students now occupy the new structures of the Rock Ridge Schools.

This is the Franklin’s history as written on the website of the Eveleth Heritage Society:

The cornerstone for Eveleth’s Benjamin Franklin School was laid by the Minnesota Grand Lodge of Masons on November 9, 1921. Classes began in the new building on November 29, 1922, for over 400 kindergarten through sixth grade pupils. School district enrollment exceeded 3,000 by the 1923-24 school year, and Franklin’s construction alleviated significant overcrowding at other schools. Some teachers and students had been in makeshift quarters at Finnish temperance halls, portable classrooms, and space over a downtown blacksmith shop.

Franklin’s students were primarily those who lived in the mining locations bordering Eveleth and in rural areas, while students attending the Spruce, Lincoln, Lincoln Annex, and Fayal schools lived closest to those buildings. Students living in town walked home for lunch, and Franklin’s cafeteria served hot meals to transported students, including junior and senior high students. A more orderly arrangement of students created true junior and senior high schools for grades 7-9 and 10-12, respectively.

In addition to grade classrooms, the large school became the new home of the Eveleth schools’ music, art, and domestic science (home economics) departments. Six classrooms on the third floor were devoted to sewing and cooking, and the cafeteria’s original location on the west end of the third floor allowed girls to use their cooking skills for school meals and special events. A dedicated art classroom was nearby, and on the second floor was a small auditorium that doubled as rehearsal space for the band and orchestra.

Also located at Franklin was the normal department, which trained girls to be teachers, especially in rural schools. It also offered one year of credit to teachers’ colleges, such as those located in Duluth, Winona, and Mankato. A particularly unique program was the “open window rooms” for “boys and girls who are greatly underweight, anemic, and in need of special attention.”

Franklin was connected to the senior high in 1992, and a major renovation project in 1997 modernized the building. During that project, drop ceilings were installed, new restrooms were built, a new kitchen was added, and classrooms received new carpeting, cabinets, and sinks. In 2014, the 40-year-old windows were replaced with ones that closely replicated the original windows.

The Franklin housed all K—4 students in the former Eveleth-Gilbert school district before Eveleth-Gilbert and Virginia consolidated to form Rock Ridge Public Schools. The Franklin building is now the temporary home of Virginia’s North Star Elementary Students until their new school opens in September 2024. Because no buyers with viable redevelopment plans have come forward, the school district plans to raze the building, and the land will be used for future development.

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The Franklin closing story continues in the Sunday, May 25, edition of the Mesabi Tribune.