Dorri Partain
Contributor

Salvaged materials from the former Thacher School are being repurposed to create a new memorial marker built on the athletic fields of Northeast Middle School.

Thacher School stood at 5008 Independence Avenue for over 100 years and took center stage as a neighborhood landmark that many residents fought to save when the proposed demolition was announced by the Kansas City School District in 2013. A grass-roots group, Save Thacher, challenged the district to mothball the school until a new community use could be implemented but a final vote by the school board initiated the school’s demolition in the summer of 2015.

Prior to the demolition, members of Save Thacher met with Shannon Jaxx, director of the district’s Repurposing Initiative, to determine which elements of the building could be saved and reused, including the construction of a memorial marker that would denote the renaming of the athletic field as Thacher Field, with an expanded soccer field and baseball diamond planned for the space where the school once stood.

Built in 1900 to serve the growing Northeast neighborhood, Thacher School replaced an earlier wooden building named Oakley. Designed by the district’s architect, Charles A. Smith, the two story building was built of buff-colored brick and detailed limestone ornamentation. A gymnasium and additional classrooms were added in 1914 to match the original building.

Named for a prominent member of the school board and Civil War Major Luin Kennedy Thacher (1837-1894). the school was last used by the district in 2010. The addition was damaged in an arson fire in 2011 which caused the roof to cave in but was not declared a dangerous building.

According to Justin Fritter, construction manager for MTS Contracting of North Kansas City, the memorial will use the complete cornerstone, a veneer of some of the original limestone decorations, such as the archways, and bands of the white porcelain-faced brick that decorated the facade. None of the buff-colored brick was salvaged.

“We’re going to have some new pieces cast to match the originals that were too heavily damaged during demolition. We were concerned about matching the original facade brick color because we didn’t want anyone to view the new marker and discover the color was wrong. Additionally, there will be a cast piece installed that reads ‘The Site of Thacher Elementary 1900-2015’. Once we receive those final pieces, we’ll be able to complete the marker fairly quickly”, Fritter said.

The memorial is the final piece of a long list of improvements to the Northeast High and Middle School campuses, including the construction of a football field at the high school and the installation of a goal post for the middle school.