Union School & Primary School

Around 1844 or 1845, the Allegany County Superintendent of Schools called for County Conventions endorsing the idea of the Union School. From this, it would seem in Allegany County, the idea of Union Schools took root very early, but seemingly impossible to determine the exact date of the union because this period was not well indexed. To that end around 1850, Common School Districts Number One and Number Two in the Town of Angelica combined and formed Union School Distrct Number One, nicknamed the “Union Free School”.

This Greek Revival School style house was located on West Main Street in the empty lot across from the firehall.  It burned on February 7th, 1889. A new Union School was built on the same location shortly afterward.

The new building was designed and built by Harvey Ellis, the same architect that worked on the “Sunnycroft” mansion just up the street. The L-shaped frame structure of residential scale and character, of which small houses were Ellis’s mainstay, contained a few Queen Anne decorative details. One recognizable Ellisonian touch would be a new window arrangement of contiguous horizontal alignment of the first and second story windows on a gable wall. It was stated of Ellis’s work that it had “harmonious proportions and orderly fenestration elevate the design above the norm for such modest school buildings.”

It was used as a public grade school until somewhere between 1909 and 1915, until both the Union School and the Academy occupied the Wilson High School building, also being built. 

Once the school closed, it was then converted to a theater for silent films, called The Grand Theater. After a subsequent addition and remodeling, it became an apartment building. It was demolished about 1977 to clear the site for a supermarket that was never built.