The Schoolhouse Mutiny
When an empty Seattle schoolhouse became a playground for neighborhood boys, a mild prank turned into a local spectacle of adolescent mischief.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
When the school closed last winter, the nuisance of boys became a problem in the area where the school was kept. The place was broken into regularly, as was common; the windows were smashed, doors opened, etc. All went well enough until at one time, they forced open a blind, smashed glass, and climbed in. They broke numerous panes of glass, ruined books, and did other things incidental to a boys' escapade. They also broke into the teachers' by the boys, to destroy their books, and in short, the marauders had, perhaps, the best of the building, and did not hesitate to show it. When they took the trouble to do this, they were caught.
“They broke numerous panes of glass, ruined books, and did other things incidental to a boys' escapade.”
This 1885 account of neighborhood youth occupying a shuttered schoolhouse echoes the perennial tension between vacant public property and local community use—a theme that remains volatile in modern Seattle, where the debate over underutilized assets and youth space persists.
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