Westover Elementary in Stamford Connecticut | architect: William F. R. Ballard

8/06/2025 11:58:00 AM

WESTOVER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL in Stamford, Conn., complements and virtually completes a small residential neighborhood created by a public housing development, Wm. C. Ward Homes, and a private development of one-family houses on small lots. It is colorful; it is advanced in many respects and entirely compatible both with its neighborhood and with the city's educational concepts: it is a school that shows when you visit it that the pupils, the staff and the community appreciate what they have. It sits in a hollow between the two housing developments on 15 acres that were formerly a swamp- what was called unbuildable land. All its pupils can walk to school. After much study the architect advised that there was one quadrant on which a building could be erected and that, considering the site's reasonable cost, drainage and fill would not be unduly expensive. The Connecticut Power Company agreed to supply fly-ash to fill under playfields. Footpaths connect directly with the children's homes. The good trees were preserved, including all the dogwoods.

William F. R. Ballard, Architect; Lanier & Levy, Mechanical Engineers; Fraioli-Blum- Yesselman, Structural Engineers; Ralph Eberlin, Civil Engineer; Marianne Macmaster, Landscape Architect; Theresa Kilham, Color Consultant

Westover Elementary was designed for 820 small children as an efficient educational plant, as moderate in cost as sound structure, easy maintenance and pleasant appearance would permit. This was the architect's first school. He studied the School Board's program, which had been carefully prepared; he visited many other schools and examined school building literature. The result is a buoyant, simple, one-story building of glass, brick and concrete block. Characteristic are the candy-stick-striped boiler and incinerator stacks covered with porcelain enamel. The library in the center of the building affords a view across grassed courts to and through all three primary wings. In these there is no wall separating corridors and classrooms. The intermediale wing has a double-loaded corridor; all rooms have outside doors. The playroom-cafeteria and the auditorium, both much used by adults, are easily accessible after school hours. Note in plan such refinements as the teacher's lounge, convenient yet remote from both office and classrooms.