Photo Gallery 3

The North Ward Elementary School and the House with the Run-Around Porch

School – The North Ward Elementary School at 515 A was built in 1914 and school records reveal that Wright Morris was a student there in 1916 at the age of six. The school was razed in the summer of 2009.

“That worn building, of unfaced red brick, with the paper-flower cutouts in the tall, dark windows, was the wonderful place I seemed to have told her quite a bit about.” From The World in the Attic

House with the run-around porch – The house across the street on the south end of the block is a house Wright Morris uses in his writings and was a large memory from his childhood.

“What made the house a home was the run-around porch, a screen that stuck or slammed, a wire basket of dead ferns, a swing that scuffed the paint off the clapboards, a rail to lean on when you threw up, a stoop to sit on when you watered the grass…Under the stoop you’ll find a scooter made of one skate, a wooden-runner sled, a pair of stilts, an iron wheel rim and a stick to push it.”  From God’s Country and My People