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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series on our region's history coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society.
Old buildings have stories to tell. Sometimes it's through their architecture or design, sometimes through construction materials or their placement on the landscape.
Sometimes it's through the history of their creation and the people involved with their construction. Often these stories are undocumented -- lost to the passage of time -- but Southington Township is lucky enough to retain a building with a story that is still evident and well known.
The Chalker High School building sits along state Route 305 near the center of the township -- an architectural glitch in an otherwise ordinary landscape. Its grand columns, striking brick facade and overall dignity are reminiscent of civic buildings found in big cities, not in rural Southington.
As every Southington student is taught, the Chalker Building was gifted to the township by Newton Chalker, but there is more to the story than just that. It's a story of perseverance, pursuit of education and a sense of civic responsibility.
A love of learning was instilled in Chalker by his mother before she died when he was a child. He was left with a father who worked the family farm but grudgingly supported his son's quest for learning and desire to explore the world outside of Trumbull County. The formidable struggle for a child to achieve higher education in rural Ohio at that time is chronicled in Chalker's unpublished autobiography.
It was a long and difficult process. Since Southington, like many small townships at the time, did not have a local high school, Chalker walked or rode his horse to the nearest one in Farmington after his primary education was completed. He did this while he worked the family farm and labored to pay for his schooling.
He never forgot the struggle and recognized that without the support of his father, it would not have been impossible.
Eventually he became a successful, wealthy lawyer and real estate developer.
Never married with no children, he found inspiration in the late 19th century national trend of philanthropy, which was primarily credited to Andrew Carnegie, but followed by many. He challenged Southington residents to transform township education by combining all of the scattered neighborhood one-room schoolhouses into a new centralized primary school.
He proposed that if that happened, and the community built the new primary school, then he would build them their first high school, complete with a fully stocked modern library. While apprehensive, the residents voted to approve the plan in 1905 and both buildings were in place by 1907.
The architecture of the Chalker Building tells that Chalker was not satisfied to just construct a high school building.
He wanted that building to make the statement that both higher education and Southington's students were important. '
The Neo-Classical Revival architecture doesjust that. Within the building are other messages from Chalker to Southington's students. The mosaic tile he chose for the foyer depicts the youth from Wadsworth's poem, Excelsior with its message of duty, heroism and ambition.
A stained-glass window bears the image of a laurel leaf wreath, a symbol of victory or success.
The messages of civic pride and sense of responsibility to community are unspoken but well represented by his philanthropy.
These ideals are worth noting as well. The concepts conveyed by the building might be more than 100 years old, but they are as relevant today as they were in 1906. The building is unique and at the same time universal. Every community has old buildings with stories to tell.
Often these stories share lessons and values that sometimes get lost in the rush of modern-day life, but tell us so much about the community in which we live.