The large brick building at 115 Southworth Street, now known as the Coburn Elementary School, was originally built as the town’s Junior High School.
Constructed in 1924 at a cost of about $300,000 it was the community’s most ambitious school building project. The building contained fourteen rooms and serviced approximately 500 pupils in grades seven, eight and nine. Some of the classes, such as sewing, shop work and drawing were held at the old Town Hall, now the site of the Senior Center on Park Street.
By 1928, the school began double sessions, each four hours in length. The Warden house, next door to the school, opened that September. It was called the Domestic Science Cottage and offered students a cooking laboratory and dining room on the lower floor and a sewing laboratory and fitting room on the upper level. Most of the work to prepare the Cottage for students was done by the shop classes.
An addition to the Junior High was built in 1929 at a cost of nearly $240,000 and the following year more than 800 students attended classes there.
The flood of 1936 caused severe damage to the building, which had eight feet of water on the first floor and 18 to 20 feet of water in the basement and boiler room. A marker indicating the water level can be found in the office.
When the High School on Piper Road opened in 1956, grade nine was transferred to the new facility and the school on Southworth Street remained a Junior High for grades seven and eight.
In 1998, when students in grades six through eight entered the newly constructed Middle School on Amostown Road, the Junior High began to serve children in grades one through five. At that time it was renamed the Phillip G. Coburn Elementary School in honor of the former owner and editor of the West Springfield Record, the local newspaper. Mr. Coburn had lived in the house opposite the school on the corner of Southworth and Lathrop Streets. The homestead is still owned by members of his family.