When the school year starts in Winnetka on Sept. 2, the students at Crow Island School will find an expanded and renovated facility that honors the building’s iconic design while updated for today’s students and teachers.
It will conclude a multiyear design and construction process that involved Chicago-based Perkins&Will, one of the firms behind the original structure that opened in 1940. The then-new firm, known as Perkins, Wheeler and Will at the time, was paired with noted father-and-son Finnish-American architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen.
Crow Island School was such a success that virtually every flat-roofed single-story brick and glass school that proliferated across the country in the baby boom years following World War II drew from its design.
From the front door on Willow Road, little has changed. There are some new security measures, but these are deftly subsumed into the original entrance. The big addition is a new wing with a gymnasium, three classrooms and a vestibule. It’s located at the southwest corner of the complex where it adjoins a previous addition by Perkins&Will that dates from 1954.
The new design was led by firmwide design director Ralph Johnson, who joined the firm in 1976. “First thing I did when I joined the firm was go out to Crow Island because it’s so important, not only to us, but historically, it’s the first modern school,” he said.
It’s not often that a building from 1940 still seems fresh and new, but the original Crow Island School is the product of remarkably thoughtful and talented architects. The scale is intimate, calibrated to the building’s primary users — kindergarten through fourth grade students. The materials are natural and warm, bathed in ample daylight from extensive windows on two sides of each classroom that provide views of the landscape. It’s hard not to be jealous of these students — we should all be fortunate enough to spend our days in spaces like these.
Shortly after Crow Island School opened, Architectural Forum magazine featured the structure in a 14-page spread. Harvard University Dean Joseph Hudnut wrote the review, but the article opened with a few paragraphs by Carleton Washburne, the Winnetka superintendent of schools. Washburne’s role was pivotal in realizing the design that has stood the test of time as a home for progressive education. His current successor, Winnetka public schools Superintendent Kelly Tess, was an integral part of the team behind the new work.
“It’s meant to mimic a home,” Tess said of the school’s design. “There’s a workspace, a living space, access to the outdoors. And the entire space is built with the child in mind. Every feature is at child height, saying to every user (that) the child in this room is the most important person in this room.”
The addition draws on this philosophy. Two of the three new classrooms mimic the original L-shaped classroom footprints established by the Saarinens in 1940 and previously replicated in the 1954 addition. The downside to this configuration is cost, because these spaces have more exterior wall that add to the expense.
“There was never any resistance that we were putting two more L-shaped classrooms in there,” Johnson said. “It could have been done more efficiently, but wouldn’t really be the right thing to do.” The third new classroom is the new art classroom and ditches the L to accommodate more specialized equipment including a kiln.
But the new addition hews closely to the original.
“It was determined that the right thing and the most appropriate thing to do was to stay in a similar vocabulary,” Perkins&Will principal Mark Jolicoeur said. Each of the new classrooms maintains the roof heights of the earlier structures, and the configuration of the windows is identical, although the new units are a bit beefier to include energy-efficient double glazing with thermal breaks that the originals lacked. Of course, the gym is both taller and larger in its footprint, but it’s expressed as a simple masonry box with its dimensions determined by the interior requirements for a variety of recreational uses. It’s certainly larger than the rest of the school, but its placement at the south end of the site renders it as a punctuation mark to the overall complex. A new lobby space allows the gymnasium to be used after hours without disturbing the older parts of the school.
The original building boasts Chicago common brick, which hasn’t been manufactured for decades. Perkins&Will’s designers did their best to match the material while admitting it was never going to be an exact duplicate. (Even their predecessors in 1954 couldn’t get a precise match.) The simple brick box features a tall narrow slot of windows and a door at the northeast corner where the gym opens to a playlot. Clerestory windows along the north elevation in conjunction with vertical slots of glass block on the south facade provide ample natural light to the space without the glare of direct sunlight. Shallow vertical slots in the new masonry walls recall subtle articulation in the earlier buildings, a contemporary riff that establishes its own mark on the complex. The power of the original design derives from its forthright simplicity. Johnson and his Perkins&Will colleagues adopt this approach as a guide and use a deft touch that does not do too much.
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“Crow Island is particularly special, because it’s on the National Historic Register, and the architecture still draws a lot of attention globally,” Tess said. “We routinely have visitors come and see the school from all over the world.” And while they come to see the building, it’s not just architects. The audience includes students, alumni, neighbors, staff, historians and educational philosophers, according to Tess. “It runs the gamut,” she said. The public can see the new addition and the historic earlier buildings on Sept. 20, when the school welcomes visitors at an open house.
The original building is a sublime expression of what architecture can — and should — be. The new additions are thoughtful and deferential, keeping the original intact to a great degree. It’s thoughtful and well intentioned, even if the larger-sized space loses a little in translation. And it’s a reminder of just how hard it is to create truly great architecture.
Edward Keegan writes, broadcasts and teaches on architectural subjects. Keegan’s biweekly architecture column is supported by a grant from former Tribune critic Blair Kamin, as administered by the not-for-profit Journalism Funding Partners. The Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.
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