Welcome to Gorman :: News & Awards

I've always been interested in old, abandoned buildings with a history.
I think about why they were built, who built them and who worked in them. And I wonder about their future.

I was in Houston in the late 1970s on business as advertising manager for ABS and overnighting there. I was taking an early morning walk from my hotel when I came upon a big building with a tall fence surrounding it.

With a bit of trepidation, I walked around the block, found an open gate in the back and went in. A rather elderly gentleman hailed me just inside the door and asked what I was doing in his building.

I explained that I was just curious, wondering what the big building had been.

His eyes lit up and he invited me in. In fact, he said he would take me on a tour. He was bored and actually had worked in the building for many years before it closed. He'd been hired as a guard although there was really nothing to guard.

That's how I got a close-up look at the famous Rice Hotel in downtown Houston. My guide took me to the 17th floor in a rickety elevator. He showed me rooms where various presidents had stayed and the historic ground level "Old Capitol Club" where Texas politicians made big talk and major laws.

"That's where LBJ sat," my guide said. "And John F. Kennedy was here the day before he was shot in Dallas."

I remember being awed by the ballroom and grand staircase; all without decorations, light fixtures or carpeting as a result of a foreclosure sale in 1977.

What happened to the Rice Hotel in Houston? It's all there on the Internet: After 20 years of vacancy, it was refurbished and opened in 1998 as an apartment complex with a host of built-in stores.

Then there was the gold mine in north-central Montana that I visited once on my way to the Billings airport.

I was still working for ABS -- on a heat synchronization project -- and had a bit of time before my plane was to leave and only a couple of hundred miles to drive. So I stopped at the sign that said "gold mine," only to arrive at the site to find a cable across the road.

I went into a nearby cafe for coffee and asked the waitress about the mine. Before she could answer, a man a few stools away said he could tell me anything I wanted to know about the mine. He had been the mine's engineer and had a key to the padlock securing the cable, so he invited me to take a tour.

He said was in the area because he figured the mine would reopen when the price of gold went up and he wanted to see how the property was holding up.

I remember a huge tailing pile and the fact that cyanide was used in the gold purification process. So it's probably an environmental hazard by now. And I don't know if the mine ever reopened. My guess is it did.

Then there's the old, vacant building I recently visited. It's fondly called the Red Brick School by many folks in Oregon. I knew it well for four years while a student at Oregon High School.

According to a paper produced by the Red Brick School historic preservation committee, the school was built in 1922 after a special election gave the school board the power to borrow $65,000. Records show that it was the women's vote that made the difference in the outcome (the 19th amendment had recently been passed).

The school was state-of-the-art at the time it was built. According to the preservation committee paper, it had "a large gymnasium, with a stage at one end, bathrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls ... with electricity and coal-burning steam and forced air heating."

Two four-year high school programs were offered -- general English and agriculture. It was a bit unusual for the times.

The school opened 84 years ago with four teachers, a principal and 106 students.

The student body remained rather consistent in size until the 1950s when a series of elementary schools were built and in 1963 a new high school was built to hold the rapidly growing student population.

The Red Brick School became an elementary school and remained so until 1991, when it became a storage facility. And so it remains.

I revisited the old high school recently, partially out of a sense of history, partially out of curiosity and partially because of the announcement that it was being purchased by Madison-based Gorman & Co. as a future company headquarters.

Tom Fischer, head custodian for the Oregon School District, was my guide and we briefly revisited history:

The old agriculture room, although full of storage shelves, is still intact. The tiny closet where we learned how to use the Babcock milk tester is still there.

The "big gym" all of 60 feet long, is still there, even the lines outlining the center and free throw circles can be seen. Although the small bleachers are gone I can still hear my mother from her seat on the top row screaming at the officials when my brother and I were "wronged" with foul calls. The stage on the east end is there but long ago was converted to an office. Yes, we had class plays and band concerts.

The classrooms still exist with their long slate blackboards. The typing room, sans typewriters, is still there. It's the one course I have used most every day since that long-ago class.

With a bit of imagination I can still see our football team changing and showering in the locker room (now an office). There are homes today with bigger shower rooms.

The huge main room and its wood floor is still there, albeit since remodeled into three classrooms.

For years I've always wondered how us farm kids ever survived after getting our education in a one room rural grade school and such a small high school. Just luck I guess. Or maybe we had good teachers and a really good education in spite of no computers, no TV and no power point.

Gary Gorman plans to restore the building and retain much of its historic architecture. I look forward to revisiting the old Red Brick School, thanks to a group of history-minded Oregonians who helped the old school to enter its fourth life.