BUXTON – Teachers and students were absent Tuesday, but a clock on a wall ticked in a first-floor classroom in Buxton’s former S.D. Hanson Elementary School.

Children’s art was posted on walls, encyclopedias were on the shelves and desks and chairs were lined up.

“It looks sad,” Stacey Gagnon, a neighbor of the school and a member of Buxton-Hollis Historical Society, said Tuesday touring the building. “There’s no people in here. It needs people.”

After decades educating Buxton’s students, the Hanson School – replaced by the new Buxton Center Elementary School next door – closed last year. Now, the Buxton-Hollis Historical Society is spearheading a drive to save the vacant school. Working with members of a group called the Re-Purpose Hanson Committee, they envision a community center at the 70-year-old school on Route 22.

“Structurally, it has good bones,” Jan Hill, president of the Buxton-Hollis Historical Society, said this week. “The building is well worth rehabilitating. Our Hanson building is a wonderful old building.”

Historical society members and the committee were to make a presentation about possible future use of the old school to Buxton selectman on Wednesday, Feb. 9, after the American Journal deadline.

Proponents of saving the school also will host a meeting for the public at the school at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 17. A snow date has been set for Wednesday, Feb. 23.

The Hanson building is still owned by School Administrative District 6, which includes Buxton, Hollis, Limington, Standish and Frye Island. Superintendent Suzanne Lukas said this week the district had offered to return the Hanson building to the town of Buxton, but the selectmen were not interested.

“We are not going to reuse that building for children,” Lukas said.

Jean Harmon, chairwoman of Buxton Board of Selectmen, said Wednesday that, because of zoning limitations and the fact that the Hanson building sits on land that cannot be separated from the grounds of the new school, the district could only offer the town a lease arrangement. Selectman Bob Libby said selectmen also had understood that annual maintenance would run $75,000.

“I don’t think we’d have any objections as long as they don’t cost the taxpayers money,” Libby said about the citizens’ proposal to save the building.

Proponents said in a pamphlet being distributed through town that rehab could be paid for with grants, fundraising, foundation support and dedicated revenue from taxpayers.

Options for future use as a community center could include a citizens’ group leasing the 22,000-square-foot, two-story building from the school district or the town’s acceptance of the old school.

Hill said the building’s value in 2007 was assessed at $1.2 million.

Neighboring communities are reusing school buildings. The city of Westbrook has a community center in its former junior high school and Gorham converted its Shaw School five years ago into its new municipal center.

The original Hanson School was built in 1913 and served as Buxton High School. Hill said the old high school burned in March 1930 and town labor rebuilt it by December 1930.

According to Hill, the town used $15,000 in insurance money and a loan to finance reconstruction.

“They borrowed $11,000 at the height of the Great Depression,” Hill said.

Hanson, which most recently housed grades 4 and 5, became one of two buildings in an elementary complex. In 1952, the brick gym annex was built at Hanson. The adjacent Jewett School was built in 1953, with an addition in 1987.

Lou Emery, who visited the Hanson building Tuesday, graduated high school there in 1946.

“I don’t think there’s basically anything wrong with it,” Emery said.

The Hanson committee has a mailing list of about 100 people interested in learning more about the school, and there’s a degree of sentimentality attached to the facility.

“This was the seniors’ room when I went to school here,” Emery said as he glanced around a first-floor classroom. “Freshmen and sophomores were upstairs.”

Original ornamental tin covers ceilings and upper parts of walls. Other features include wooden wainscoting and stairways along with hardwood floors.

Hill said siding, energy-efficient windows and a new boiler have been installed in recent years.

“I think it looks great,” said Donna Kovacs, a member of the Re-Purpose Hanson Committee.

The historical society is in the process of learning whether the building is eligible for national landmark status. “We suspect it is,” Hill said.

The upper floor has a stage and an assembly area, which has been divided into classrooms. But, reopened, Hill estimated it could accommodate 125 people. Kovacs thought it would be ideal for a children’s theater.

“It would be great to have more things right here in Buxton,” Kovacs said.

The tour this week stirred old memories. Emery peeked in a closet and recalled it was where the student council in his day sold candy. He said Fred Jewett was then principal.

Hill said the building would need a new entrance and an elevator to make it handicapped accessible. Hill expected that an architect would have a cost estimate for the rehab project at Wednesday’s meeting.

The school was named in honor of an industrialist. Hill said the area had been an early industrial center in Buxton and the S.D. Hanson coat shop there had employed 1,200 women. “He was the major industrialist of early Buxton,” Hill said.

Buxton Center was once a bustling hub. But industry left and even the Town Hall and the town’s Highway Department have relocated.

“I would love to see more of a community built up in this area,” Kovacs said, suggesting that a teen center would be “wonderful.”

Advocates of saving the building see it as serving all age groups in the community. Hill said there’s a need for senior citizens to have a place to walk inside during winter months. “There are so many groups that need gym space,” Hill said.

“I think our goal is to save the building,” said Emery, a past historical society president, but, he added, “We’ve got to be sure we can support it.”

Jan Hill, president of the Buxton-Hollis Historical Society and a leader of the effort to re-purpose the now unused Hanson school into a community center, says a key benefit of the plan is the large gymnasium. Photo by Rich Obrey