This is, simply, a special card. Adolph Link gifted us with a drawing of a District 54 school that still exists but is no longer in this form. According to his obituary, Mr. Link "began his career traveling the countryside, painting pictures of farmhouses" and we have to assume that, even later in life, this building, too, caught his eye. In fact, he could probably see it from his house on Plum Grove Road.

The building is Schaumburg School. It was designed by Paul Schweikher, the architect whose Schweikher House masterpiece in Schaumburg is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Before he left Schaumburg Township in 1953 to become Chair of the Yale School of Architecture, Schweikher designed this school for the new Schaumburg Community Consolidated School District 54 that had been organized in 1952.

It was the first school of the district and was incredibly unique, given the rock chimney and the rock walls on the width sides of the rectangular building. The length sides consisted almost exclusively of glass windows. Imagine this building popping up in the middle of the farm fields of 1953.

The rock walls and chimney still exist today at the District 54 Early Learning Center and are most likely comprised of stones picked up in nearby farm fields. In fact, there were probably piles of them on the edges of the fields that Mr. Schweikher routinely drove past during his time in Schaumburg Township. This is a look at the chimney and one of the rock walls today.

Rock chimney outside of the District 54 Early Learning Center
Rock walls in the District 54 Early Learning Center

One has to wonder if Mr. Link also created this card as stationery for the new school district as he was known to do for various churches. And, if he did, he most likely sketched in the Christmas tree behind the building for the purposes of the Christmas card.

It was very nice of Mr. Link to date the card for us in the message. Do you suppose he put in the year 1954 as an allusion to the fact that this card details the first school in District 54?

And, of course, his cleverness comes out to play in the closing when he refers to his family name as "The chain family." One would have to think this was a long, ongoing pun in the Link family. It probably preceded him!

It is interesting to contemplate if and when Mr. Link and Mr. Schweikher ever met during their lives in Schaumburg Township. There is certainly overlap in time. Mr. Link lived here from 1932 until his death in 1971. Mr. Schweikher moved here in 1938/39 and lived here until he left in 1953. One has to think they were acquaintances--especially when we consider that one lived on Meacham and the other on Plum Grove, which was not too far away as the crow flies.

Jane Rozek
Local History Librarian
Schaumburg Township District Library
jrozek@stdl.org