Editor Rachel Stone recently reported that the entire Bonham Elementary staff is moving to a school in Pleasant Grove, and I wondered what would happen to the building they are vacating. The historic structure on Henderson isn’t going unnoticed by preservation advocates, and it sits amid new and trendy apartment complexes on Henderson Avenue, which has undergone a renaissance in recent years. Could Bonham be turned into some sort of historical, upscale lofts?
Not anytime soon, says Dallas ISD spokesman Jon Dahlander, who agrees that Bonham sits on a “prime piece of real estate” and emphasizes that the district will hang on to it. He points to his elementary alma mater, Withers, as well as DeGolyer and Nathan Adams nearby, which were among schools shut down in the ’80s and reopened in the early ’90s when attendance warranted.
“Just because a school is mothballed for a few years doesn’t mean it can’t be opened and revisited another time,” Dahlander says.
