On July 16, 1961, bulldozers began razing a 79-year-old, three-story brick building on 11th Avenue between College and Center streets.

College Street School, as it was known, had been built in 1882, before electricity, HVAC and the possibility of school enrollments increasing in “40 percent chunks from one year to the next.”

Time and neglect had worn it down, and in 1956 a Kentucky Department of Education survey team labeled it a “perfect fire trap.” A post office was built there in its place, which opened in 1972 and closed in 2017.

– “Way Back When in Warren County” is compiled by researchers at the Warren County Public Library and appears twice weekly in the Bowling Green Daily News. For more information about the library, visit warrenpl.org.