A class photograph of students and a teacher in front of Ontarioville School circa 1912. The caption on the back of the photo is "Graduating class of Ontarioville District 50 on Lake Street." The building is possibly Arthur Schlueter's auto garage, which was used as Ontarioville School before a permanent building was finished in 1928.

Hanover Harvesters states this photograph was "at the original schoolhouse on Lake Street, c1912." Marilyn Gallagher says in Ontarioville: Its Past and Its People that prior to 1910, “Ontarioville children were schooled with the Bartlett children in a building midway between the two villages." Hanover Harvesters states that this school was located on Lake Street and was a mile west of Hanover Park. It is possible this photograph might be from the school west of Hanover Park.

The photo was from Ed Scholer.

It is unknown when exactly “Ontarioville School” as an entity began. The early dates of Ontarioville School prior to 1928 are not entirely certain. The 1976 article “Early School Days in Ontarioville,” by Bob Busche, says a small frame building was built in the 1850s for the school. Busche says that in 1888, Ontarioville School was moved to Ontarioville to Arthur Schlueter’s auto service station on Lake Street. Ralph Feeley in From Camelot to Metropolis says that by 1910, Ontarioville had established an elementary school district. Feeley also confirms Busche by stating that school was held at the auto service station of Arthur Schlueter. This auto garage was located near where Hanover Park Police Department and Public Works are today (on the south side of Lake Street). There was always just one large class of students in those early days.

Marilyn Gallagher says in Ontarioville: Its Past and Its People that prior to 1910, “Ontarioville children were schooled with the Bartlett children in a building midway between the two villages. Classes for the Ontarioville children were then held in a one-room building on State Road” with two outhouses in the back and a pond the children used for ice skating in the winter. State Road was Lake Street, so Gallagher may also be referring to Schlueter’s garage.

An 1898 plat map of Hanover Township has a symbol marked “SCHOOL” at about the same location as where Schlueter’s Garage was located.

The school went up to 8^th grade. There was no high school in the school district, so students had to take the train into Elgin and then walk to the school.

An Arlington Heights Herald article from 1916 states that the school directors put indoor closets and a furnace into the school in December of that year. To show their appreciation for this, the students gave a program with singing and images projected from a stereopticon (a kind of image projector). According to a 1916 ad, indoor closets were receptacles much like toilets, but they had to be emptied once a month and were not always connected to the plumbing.

In 1928, School District 50 voted to build a “modern two-room brick building with a basement auditorium at Elm and Center Streets in the Grant’s subdivision of Ontarioville” (Busche). The new building was dedicated December 5^th, 1928. The teacher was Miss Ruth A. Rathmann (alternately spelled Rathman). The school had 29 students. The school also had central heating, good lighting, varnished wooden floors, and inside plumbing.

Feeley says that from 1931 to 1938, during the Great Depression, Ontarioville’s population either remained the same or decreased. As a result, the number of students was so small that only one of the two rooms of the building was used.

The 1941-1942 year saw 55 children attending the school (Busche). In 1954, a two-room addition to the school was completed. By this time, Ontarioville School was in District 250.

In 1957, several small schools such as Ontarioville School was absorbed into Elgin School District U-46. The school population increased, and Laurel Hill Elementary School was finished in 1962 to lessen the overcrowding of Ontarioville School.

Eight new rooms and a gymnasium were added to Ontarioville School in 1967; the school had been so overcrowded that it was holding classes on split shifts.

Ontarioville Elementary School still stands in the same location at 2100 Elm Ave in Hanover Park, larger and more modern than when it was first built in 1928.

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