This month we’ve been working with the Portland Housing Bureau and the Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association to research and to share the remarkable story of the A.L. Mills Open Air School located at the southwest corner of SE 60^th and Stark.

SE 60th elevation of the A.L. Mills Open Air School, built for “low vitality” children in 1919. Photograph Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society, from the Ben Gifford Collection Box 8, Folder 5.

You’ve driven by this little jog in 60^th and maybe looked at the 106-year-old building—now surrounded by cyclone fencing—and wondered about its history. Empty now since 2019 and owned by the Portland Housing Bureau, the building will soon be deconstructed and the site repurposed for affordable housing.

In the meantime before the building is gone, both the Housing Bureau and the Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association wanted to collect and share stories about the role the old school has played in neighborhood life, and to offer neighbors a chance to come take one last look. They reached out to us for help, which has allowed our customary deep dive for stories and insights that bring the building to life, at least in our imaginations.

The east classroom at the A.L. Mills Open Air School in the early 1920s and today. Early photo courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society, from the Ben Gifford Collection Box 8, File 5. Current photo by author.

These last three weekends, we’ve led tours to share these stories, which will culminate in a final open house and tour on Saturday morning, December 7th from 10:00-Noon. Here’s a link to more information.

Later in December here on the blog, we’ll devote a full post to the stories and photos we’ve uncovered about the school and the site, but for now a short summary would go like this:

Built in 1918-1919 as Oregon’s only school entirely devoted to being “open air” throughout the school year, which was thought to be healthful during the rise of tuberculosis and other diseases. Children studied, played, ate and napped in the open-air classrooms, which were defined by their large banks of windows. The students were issued special warm clothing and monitored closely by a school nurse who also coordinated one-on-one with families on menu planning and other behaviors to help children return to vitality.

In 1949, after 30 years as an open-air school, the building was repurposed as an annex to the burgeoning nearby Mt. Tabor School. An additional classroom was built and until the early 1970s, the site hosted baby boomer kindergarten and first grade students who went on to Mt. Tabor School.

After the school function ended in 1973, the building was repurposed again as the home of a community arts and theater program run by Portland Parks and Recreation. Budget cuts in the early 1990s ended those programs and the property was on track to be sold to a private owner before being repurposed again and leased by Portland Parks to the YMCA which operated it as a daycare until 2019.

Portland Parks surplused the property in 2016 to the Portland Housing Bureau. The YMCA daycare operation ended in 2019 and the building has been vacant since then. Today, the Housing Bureau is readying the site for redevelopment as affordable housing.

Just to add a little more depth, before the Open Air School, the site hosted an imposing two-story bell-towered wood-frame elementary school between 1880-1911 but it burned in January 1911. Before that the site hosted the area’s first school, conducted in a frontier log structure. Plus, that corner of SE 60^th and Stark was the center of the vibrant Mt. Tabor community before being annexed into Portland in 1905.

So many stories.