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Image courtesy of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library.
Image courtesy of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library.

Looking Backward: Military Road School, 1908

by / Jan. 16, 2019 6pm EST
School No. 42, located at Military Road and Clay Street, is the oldest public school building still standing in the City of Buffalo. The “Military Road School” was erected in 1883 in what was then the rural outskirts of Black Rock. It was originally designed to house 50 students, was expanded with the annex at right in 1894, and by 1920 housed 370 students. In 1908, when this photograph was taken by the Department of Public Works, the school was determined to be overcrowded and unsafe. In a 1911 Buffalo Times account, one alderman called the school “a dilapidated old barracks” and “a disgrace to the city to house children in a place of that kind.” It is the only wood-frame public school to survive in Buffalo.
 
Here’s the building in August 2017:

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