When Bolton School merges with Harvey Rice next school year, it will be the end of one of the oldest elementary schools in Cleveland.
Named for prominent Cleveland attorney Thomas Bolton, who became a city councilman, judge and patriarch of the Bolton political clan, the earliest mention of the school on East 90th Street is 1875, although The Plain Dealer’s historical archives have the school opening in 1858.
The great Olympian James Cleveland Owens, better known as Jesse, got his nickname as a sixth grader at the Cleveland school. Owens was called J.C. at home, but his Bolton teacher thought his name was Jesse because reportedly she couldn’t understand his Southern drawl. He enrolled at the Fairfax neighborhood school in 1926, after his family left behind Alabama sharecropping.
It was there that Owens met Charles Riley, a playground supervisor, who recognized his athletic talent and guided his track and field career. In 1936, in Berlin, Owens became the first American to win four gold medals in a single Olympics – and he did so as Adolf Hitler boasted about white superiority.
By 1958, Bolton was hailed as the one of oldest and largest elementary schools in the city with 1,352 students, rife with additions to accommodate its huge enrollment, according to The Plain Dealer. In 1971, the school district built a new French-inspired two-story building on Quebec Street, a block away from the original school.
The new construction was much needed, according to a Plain Dealer writer, who called it “one of the oldest, most inadequate and expensive to maintain school buildings in the city.”
Last year, the district said Bolton is steadily losing students, leading to a merger with Harvey Rice, which is about two miles away.
