Jacksonville Historic Annie Lytle Elementary Consumed by Fire

Sometime in 2010, during one the many Adventures of James and Valerie, we stopped by school house number four, in downtown Jacksonville. I have this habit of making rapid turn offs to areas that Valerie says she wants to visit “someday.” I usually decide that means TODAY!

We took such a side trip to this stately old building one afternoon and Valerie wrote an excellent article about it for the Examiner.com. She also reposted it to her personal blog.  This morning, Valerie was contacted by a TV Reporter from a local news station. It turns out that last night, Historic School House #4 of Jacksonville was consumed by fire. The Reporter had come across her blog and wanted to interview her about the schoolhouse.

We were both a little perplexed. The abandoned Annie Lytle Elementary school had long been reputed to be haunted. But since the Reporter didn’t seem to be taking the paranormal or psychic angle about the school, we wondered what relevance her article had to fact that the building had burned down.

Either way, we will keep you posted about any interview. Valerie and I also plan on going by the school sometime this next week to take some pictures of the burned out structure. It’s very, very sad that such a magnificent building was allowed to deteriorate to such a degree.

*********

Special thanks to ‘Your Main Paradox’ from citynoise.org for his interesting blog and photos.