- City:
- Sapulpa, OK
- Site Type:
- Education and Health, Schools
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Completed:
- 1937
- Quality of Information:
- Very Good
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
This former WPA school in what was then the community of Blue Bell (no longer extant) was restored as a private residence in the 1990s:
“But now, thanks to an adventurous couple from Tulsa, there is something else in Blue Bell that promises to secure its legacy – an old, hand-hewn sandstone school building restored to its glory and looking much as it did in 1937 when it was built by the Works Progress Administration…
The building, gutted and remodeled during the past four years by the Wingfields, has everything that more modern homes have – living room, kitchen, bedrooms, baths. But the family also has kept much of the decor from an era when area farm kids attended first through eighth grades there…
School pictures loaned to the Wingfields by neighbors show there were about 60 students and two teachers in 1937-38. That was the year Blue Bell students moved into their new building.
The old, one-room frame school building had burned; students attended classes in the church building while WPA workers built the new one…
The buildings at Blue Bell School were among about a half-dozen other area projects completed by the WPA in the mid- to late 1930s. The sand stone at Blue Bell was quarried and chiseled about a quarter-mile away.
Master stonemasons, carpenters and cooks who had been put back to work by the government program lived in tents on the site. An engraved stone on the southwest corner of the building carries the WPA logo as well as names of the Blue Bell School Board members in 1937.
The Wingfields are completing paperwork in an effort to have the restored building listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”
The school closed in the 1960s when the Blue Bell school district merged with Kellyville.
Source notes
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Terry L Harper
I was borne in Blue Bell in 1937. My parents taught school Mary and Fred Swan in Blue Bell at that time. I had a sister 7 years older. My parents handed down stories to me. They helped many people in the community as many had little or no educations.
One of the stories was, some people had been missing and needed to be located. They dismissed the kids at school to go and look for them. The children located the people (not sure how many) but they were in a farmers pig pin partially eaten. My mother told of dressing the deceased and helping with legal documents.
My folks relocated to a place in the country close to Tulsa. They were furnished a house on the school property..I remember it was just called 36. I tried to find it in later years but was unable.
Gale Pruitt
28796 Welcome View
Escondido, CA 92026
cell 760-533-0708
My father James Pete Harper purchased the Bluebell School along with the small teachers home and a total of 10 acres in the fall of 1966, our family lived there in the old school building from February 1967 until early 1980. Several other people have owned the property since, with lots of xhanges being made. The saddest change was when a previous owner removed the rock wall and archway on the West side of the property along the street. Feel free to contact me., at the email address provided