Changing Streetscapes: Roger Wolcott School

The third (1916, left) and fourth (1925, right) Wilson/Roger Wolcott School buildings, 1962. | WHS collections 2024.32.58, gift of John Zatti Jr.

If you grew up in the Wilson neighborhood of Windsor in the 19th and 20th centuries, chances are you attended Roger Wolcott School. But which one? There have been five school buildings that have occupied the same general location at the corner of Windsor and East Wolcott Avenues.

The first was a one-room schoolhouse built around 1805 that stood on the east side of Windsor Avenue. At the time it was known as the First District School or Wilson School. (Unfortunately, we don’t know if any photos of it exist.) Historian Leland P. Wilson (1871-1959) examined many extant school records in Town Hall and discovered this tidbit about teachers and tuition:

The highest salary paid a teacher prior to 1832 was $1.25 per week which if you please included Saturdays, the teacher having to secure her board among the scholars, also each pupil having to furnish 12 solid feet of good hard wood before being enrolled.

Wilson Schoolhouse (left), the second school building for the neighborhood, c.1900, colorized. This shot, looking southwest, was taken from the curve of what is now Deerfield Rd. as it turns into Windsor Avenue (though at the time, the section of Windsor Ave. that forks from Deerfield and runs straight north did not exist). | Photo by C. Robert Hatheway. WHS collections 2021.27.34, gift of Jane Morin.

The second school building was double the size: a two-story, two-room brick structure built in 1856 across the street. The downstairs room held classes, and the upstairs was used for religious and community purposes. L.P. Wilson attended school in this building, and described his experience:

In 1879 during the winter term 60 pupils were enrolled, including nine grades. […] The room was so crowded we had to sit three at a desk with a chalk mark between each pupil, who if he wiggled enough to erase one of the marks, forfeited his recess.

In 1916, the school doubled in size again as the town accommodated the neighborhood’s rapidly increasing population. This third building, containing four classrooms, was erected directly in front of the previous one. It was the first of the buildings to actually be named Roger Wolcott School. The local newspaper at the time, the Windsor Town Crier, explained the namesake: “in honor of this famous Windsor man who was governor of Connecticut for seven years [sic, from 1750-1754] and who was, according to one historian, ‘Connecticut’s only governor that never attended school.’”

Left: 1921 Sanborn insurance map showing the second and third Wilson/Roger Wolcott School buildings (pink), plus a portable building (yellow) to their north. Right: 1947 Sanborn map showing the third (built 1916) and fourth (built 1925) school buildings.

But the number of school-age children quickly outgrew these premises. Only four years later, the town had to add temporary portable buildings next door. Five years after that, in 1925, an additional permanent eight-room brick building replaced the portables. By then, Roger Wolcott had passed Windsor Center’s Roger Ludlow School to claim the largest student body of all the grammar schools. They had 435 students enrolled that year, from kindergarten to grade 8.

The third (1916, left) and fourth (1925, right) Wilson/Roger Wolcott School buildings, 1970s | WHS collections 1996.55.13, gift of the town of Windsor

For several years, all three brick schoolhouses stood at the same time, serving the booming population of the Wilson neighborhood. The construction of even more new schools in the southern half of town throughout the 1950s and 60s allowed the old Roger Wolcott School buildings to be taken down one after the other, but not before a fifth school building, still called Roger Wolcott School, was erected in 1966. It had 16 classrooms, continuing the pattern of doubling the capacity with each new building.

Removing the fourth school building, 1983. The fifth Wilson/Roger Wolcott School building can be seen behind the demolition area. WHS collections 1998.12.1.549, photo by Adelbert Coe.

Redistricting map after the closing of Roger Wolcott School, 1991. Courtesy of the Hartford Courant (edited by WHS)

But while the town’s population continued growing, the demographic distribution of that growth was not even across town. As more people of color disproportionately moved into Wilson, Windsor’s schools were becoming de facto segregated. Public schools across the state had trended in the same direction for years, which led to the passing of a statewide racial balance law in 1969. The law required redistricting to ensure a balance of racial groups represented across public schools in each school district.

In the late-1980s to early-1990s, effects of this law collided with town-wide budget shortfalls, which ultimately led to the closing of Roger Wolcott School in 1991. Its students were redistributed to the four remaining elementary schools, sometimes miles away from their homes. All children living east of Route 159 were sent to Oliver Ellsworth School, and children living in a square area behind the L.P. Wilson Community Center were bused to Poquonock School.

The closure started a period of flux for the school. In 1996, Roger Wolcott transitioned to become the Roger Wolcott Early Childhood Center. It closed again several years later and for a while was only sporadically used for storage space and by local robotics teams. Finally, the school gained new life in 2021 when CREC (Capitol Region Education Council) took it over to be their new location for a Head Start program. Though it is now a CREC early learning center, it still retains the name of Roger Wolcott School.

By Michelle Tom, librarian/archivist, 2025