Est. January 25, 1914•723 S Concord Street•South Park, Seattle
A history of Concord School, 1914 to today
Inside: Class portraits, a 1965 aerial and a blackboard hidden for 52 years
A history of Concord School, South Park, Seattle
Concord School stands on a ridge above the Duwamish River in South Park, at 723 South Concord Street. Designed by district architect Edgar Blair and opened in January 1914, its three stories of red and buff brick have served the neighborhood’s children for more than a century.
South Park has changed a great deal around it. The river was straightened into a shipping channel, farmland gave way to industry, a freeway was built along the hill and, from the 1970s, the neighborhood became home to a large Latino community. The school changed too. It was enlarged, renovated, designated a city landmark and, in 2009, began teaching in both Spanish and English.
This account follows Concord from its predecessor at the foot of the hill to the dual-language school of today. It draws on district records, the city’s historic sites survey, the 1999 renovation drawings and photographs held by the Seattle Public Schools Archives and the Museum of History & Industry.
Three stories of red and buff brick on a ridge above the Duwamish River
Concord School, c. 1914. The new building on its unplanted site, with a boardwalk at the corner and three ventilator cowls on the roof. Seattle Public Schools Archives.
01 Chapter 1 Before the hill
South Park, 1850s to 1914
For thousands of years the Duwamish people lived along the river that gives the valley its name, fishing its waters and building cedar longhouses on its banks.
American settlers began claiming land in the area in the 1850s. In 1889 a farm on the river was platted as the town of South Park, though it grew slowly; industry favored neighbouring Georgetown and South Park remained largely agricultural.
By the early 1900s many of its farmers were Italian and Japanese immigrants who grew vegetables on the river flats. After 1907 they sold much of their produce directly at the new Pike Place Market. South Park incorporated as a city in 1905 and two years later voted, 186 to 36, to be annexed by Seattle.
The neighborhood’s first school, South Park School, was an eight-room, two-story wooden building on Twelfth Avenue South, at the bottom of the hill. It had opened by 1902 and became part of the Seattle School District with annexation. A slough beside the school was a known temptation for students, some of whom arrived late and wet after exploring it on rafts.
By 1909 the school was overcrowded. That year the board purchased a site on Concord Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues South, and in 1912 it voted to build a fireproof brick school there. The new building was named Concord School after the street it faced; the name was approved on February 24, 1913.
On January 25, 1914 between 200 and 300 students cleared their desks at South Park School and carried their books and supplies up the hill. As they approached the new building, the first streetcar crossed the new bridge over the Duwamish on Eighth Avenue South.
The grounds were unfinished. At the first recess the schoolyard was deep mud, and students who played in it were sent home to clean up. Others who left the grounds lost their way in the ferns and hazelnut bushes that still covered the hillside. The principal, F. C. Jackson, who had come from South Park School, set new rules soon afterwards.
The old building remained in use as an annex of Concord until September 1932. It was demolished in 1938, and the site is now occupied by the South Park Community Center.
| Location | 12th Avenue S, between Sullivan and Thistle |
|---|---|
| Building | Eight rooms, two stories, wood |
| Site | 0.85 acres |
| c. 1902 | Opens |
| 1907 | Joins Seattle School District |
| 1914 to 1932 | Annex of Concord |
| 1938 | Demolished |
| Today | South Park Community Center |
January 25, 1914
Between 200 and 300 students cleared their desks at South Park School
January 25, 1914
and carried their books and supplies up the hill.
The climb. An illustrative reconstruction, not archival footage.
02 Chapter 2 The building
Edgar Blair, district architect
Concord School was designed by Edgar Blair, architect to the Seattle School District.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1871, Blair studied architecture at Columbia University and worked as a draftsman for McKim, Mead & White in New York before opening his own practice in Washington, DC. He moved to Seattle in 1906, joined the school board’s staff as head draftsman by 1909 and served as district architect from 1910 to 1918, working on about 32 schools.
Seattle’s population was growing rapidly, and the district needed durable, fire-resistant buildings that could be built quickly in new neighborhoods. Blair’s response was a series of standard designs in brick. Concord belongs to one such group: the district’s history records it as identical to McGilvra School in Madison Park and McDonald School near Green Lake, both completed within months of Concord.
The building is a three-story rectangle under a low hipped roof. Its walls are red brick, banded with courses of buff brick, and a deep wooden cornice with modillions runs below the eaves. Tall sash windows are grouped in threes and fours to light the classrooms. The entrance projects from the main facade in pale brick and cast stone, with the school’s name carved in the lintel and a decorated surround framing the doors.
The city’s historic sites survey classifies the style as Beaux Arts Neoclassical; the school district describes it as Colonial Revival. In either case the effect relies less on ornament than on proportion, the rhythm of the window bays and the contrast of the two brick colors.
The school cost $80,460 to build and enrolled about 240 students in its first year. It was placed on the most prominent ridge in the neighborhood, visible from the farms below. The city’s survey notes that its plan, windows and cladding remain intact and that it contributes to South Park’s historic identity.
Blair returned to private practice in 1919 and died in Seattle in 1924.
Red brick, buff brick, cast stone, cornice, sash. Approximate.
723 S Concord St
Blair’s design asks little of ornament and a great deal of proportion. Turn the school in your hand, lift the roof from its walls, and see how each part of the facade meets the next.
Eight features of Blair’s design, from the three cowls on the roof to the stone base.
Main entrances photographed today
The same projecting pavilion, carved name panel, keystone and door surround appear at all three.
02 Concord in figures 1914 to 2022
The building has changed little since 1914. The number of children inside it, the land around it and the languages they speak have changed a great deal. These pages chart that century from the district’s records.
Students on the roll
2401914 The first year
5161958-59 The peak
4122014 Immersion era
3292022 Latest count
1932Annex closes1960Six portables1971Gym added1999-2000At E. C. Hughes2009Immersion
Recorded enrollment for selected years. The line joins recorded figures only. Building: Concord School, c. 1914.
66Acres added
to South Park
by 1920
From 1913 the meandering Duwamish was dredged and straightened into a deep shipping channel, and South Park gained land along its banks.
Share of students receiving bilingual services. Concord became an ESL and bilingual center in 1996-97, and began Spanish-English dual-language immersion in 2009.
Buying the block
Concord opened on a hilltop lot surrounded by houses. The district enlarged the site in 1928 and 1945, and during the 1999-2000 renovation bought the last houses on the block.
1.93acres
Squares drawn to scale by area. The 1965 aerial view fills the 1945 site for reference and is not to scale.
$80,460Cost to build, 1913
186 to 36Vote to join Seattle, 1907
32Seattle schools by Edgar Blair
1–8 to K–5Grades in 1914 and today
03 Chapter 3 The class portraits
The class portraits, 1914 to 1997
For much of the twentieth century Concord’s classes were photographed each year on the stair of the main entrance.
The prints in the district archive are numbered in white ink and dated by hand, and together they form a record of the neighborhood’s children across eight decades.
The earliest surviving portrait shows the entire school assembled at once. Students fill the stair and the ground on either side of it, the youngest seated in front, the oldest standing on the stair walls, with members of the baseball team in their lettered jerseys among them. The portraits of the 1930s show single classes: boys in overalls and lace-up boots, girls in cotton print dresses and, in winter, heavy coats.
South Park at that time was a community of small farms and houses, home to families of Italian, Japanese and other backgrounds. Japanese American farmers in the Duwamish and Green River valleys supplied a large share of the produce sold at Pike Place Market, although state law prevented them from owning land.
In 1942, under Executive Order 9066, Japanese American families in the region were forcibly removed and incarcerated. Many did not return. The class portraits from the preceding years include some of their children.
On the same stair
1933
1935
1936
1997
Keep scrolling →
The class portraits continued into the 1990s. The setting had not changed: the photographer still worked at the main entrance, and students still stood on the stair between the same stone walls, the smallest in front. The prints were now in color, mounted on card with the school year, the teacher’s name and the names of every student.
The 1996-97 school year was a significant one for Concord. That fall it became an ESL and bilingual center, with about 17 percent of its students receiving bilingual services. By then South Park was home to a large Latino community.
In 1999 the school closed for renovation. When it reopened in September 2000, the entrance and its stair, designated a city landmark the year before, had been preserved unchanged.
On the mount. “1996 Concord Elementary School 1997. Ms. Claudia Allan, Principal. Mrs. Maria Fletcher, Grade 2.” The names of 29 students follow, row by row.
04 Chapter 4 Inside the school
Inside the school, 1940s to 1990
A photograph from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer collection shows Concord’s lunchroom at a busy midday: long wooden tables and benches, glass milk bottles and plates of food, with staff in aprons serving at the far end of the room.
Enrollment rose sharply after the Second World War. It reached its peak of 516 students in 1958-59, and by 1960 six portable classrooms stood on the grounds. In 1971 the district added a gymnasium and multipurpose room, designed by Shavey & Schmidt, and the number of portables was reduced to three.
By the early 1970s a large mural covered the lunchroom’s end wall: concentric rings, clouds and stars, plants and fruit, and at its center a sun with a face. In one photograph of the period, a hand-lettered sign beside the flag warns that the paint is still wet.
516Students at the 1958-59 peak
6Portable classrooms, 1960
1971Gymnasium and multipurpose room added
In 1990 workers removing a chalkboard to install bulletin boards found an older blackboard behind it. The sixth-grade class of June 1938 had decorated it with three colored-chalk drawings of scenes from Norway, Portugal and Italy.
The six artists signed beneath their pictures, and their 20 classmates signed in lists between them. The discovery led to a reunion of the teacher, Mary Luch Bleakney, and several of her former students.
Found 1990
52years hidden
1938 – 199052 years behind a newer chalkboard, one tick per year
June 1938 drawn1990 found
Illustrative reconstruction. Drawings and signatures are schematic, not a copy of the original board.
Concord from the air, 1965. The 1913 building, its boiler chimney and a low annex, surrounded by houses. SPSA 215-3.
05 Chapter 5 Renovation
Landmark status and the 1999 drawings
By the 1990s the building needed substantial work.
Seismic upgrades were carried out in 1992, but the building systems were ageing and the school needed more space. As with many schools of its period, the district faced a choice between renovation and replacement.
On February 18, 1998 the City of Seattle designated the 1913 exterior and the first-floor entrance stairwell as a landmark. The renovation that followed was funded by the district’s first Building Excellence levy and designed by the Tsang Partnership.
The record drawings, dated February 1999, set out what would be removed and what would be kept. Interior partitions, finishes and ceilings were to be demolished. Structural beams and columns, concrete floors, stairs and masonry walls were to remain. The three roof ventilators were to be refurbished, the masonry cleaned and decayed wood sash replaced to match the original.
A new classroom wing and gymnasium were built beside the original in banded masonry block. Students spent the 1999-2000 school year at the E. C. Hughes building and returned in September 2000. The district also purchased the remaining houses on the block, bringing the whole of it into school ownership.
1998Exterior and entrance stair landmarked
1999Students relocated to E. C. Hughes
4.21Acres: the full block
Sheet D111, demolition elevations. Tsang Partnership, 1999.
06 Chapter 6 The school today
The emblem and the school today
Two copies of Concord’s emblem hang beside the main entrance, below the name carved in 1913.
It is a bold letter C divided into five segments, each holding a cut-paper figure: a bird, a branching plant, a winding river, a creature and an open book.
The school publishes no key to the emblem. Read against what happens inside the building today, though, each figure finds a counterpart. In 2018 Concord International School taught 365 students from kindergarten to fifth grade, about 60 percent of them Spanish speakers.
An S-shaped garden of native plants, funded in 2017 by the King Conservation District and the City of Seattle, was planned to attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds and to give students a place for outdoor science.
Students learn the engineering design process (ask, imagine, plan, create, improve) and measure and build with paper, cardboard and wood.
In the school’s environmental stewardship program, older students sort food waste at breakfast and lunch, and every classroom recycles. Duwamish Opportunity Fund grants helped renew the front entry.
A growing collection of authentic Spanish-language books and works in translation supports reading in both languages of the dual-language program.
Students sing, dance and play xylophones, djembes, tubanos, bongos and ukuleles. Art lessons study artists from many cultures; one mosaic project took a reclining puma as its guide.
“Each day at Concord I will learn by doing my best, by working with others, and by being safe, fair, and kind.”
365Students, K to 5, 2018
60%Spanish speakers, 2018
2009Dual-language immersion begins
7Instruments in music class
Chronology 1889 to today
Concord School and South Park, 1889 to today
Four periods in the life of the school, from the farm town below the hill to the dual-language school of today.
