Winn School, 1929

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Winn School was built on Saragosa Street in response to a petition from the Hispanic community in the Southside Chandler neighborhood

From its founding in 1912, Chandler was a planned community with strict zoning ordinances.  Some of these ordinances dictated minimum building costs for houses in specific neighborhoods, which led poor, minority residents to live in the cheaper neighborhoods south of Chandler’s downtown. In 1919, two developers bought 10 acres of empty land in Southside, divided it into 100 lots, and sold them to the mostly Hispanic community members who lived in the area. They called the neighborhood Winn’s Addition.

Residents living in Southside and Winn’s Addition submitted a petition to the Chandler school board in June 1929 requesting a school be built for their children in their neighborhood. Written in both English and Spanish, the petition read:

“To the Board of Directors of Chandler Schools: We, the undersigned, residents of the South Chandler District, hereby ask a petition that a school for the lower grades be established in Winn’s addition in the town of Chandler, as soon as is possible.”

Many of the neighborhood’s most prominent residents signed the petition. The school board was eager to oblige, as they viewed a new school in Winn’s Addition as a solution to a rising school attendance problem. The school board rushed construction of the new Henry D. Frankfurt designed school, built on Saragosa Street, to be open in time for the next school year. By October, the district could report attendance at Winn School at over 95%. The district’s attendance issue was solved, and more importantly Southside students had a school to call their own.

Winn School was leased to the City of Chandler in 1969 to be run as a community center. Today, the Chandler branch of the Salvation Army operates out of the old school building.