Time capsule unearthed at former Butler Middle School
As Butler Area School District prepares to sell the former Butler Middle School, administrators and students brought the 100-plus-year-old building’s story full-circle Friday, Feb. 28, by opening a time capsule placed in its cornerstone in 1917.
The time capsule was nearly a forgotten artifact from the completion of the school on May 8, 1917, but local historian Bill May alerted the school district to its existence and location in the building. Within 24 hours, Scott Fitzpatrick, carpenter for Butler Area School District, was digging through a wall in the former school’s north side to excavate the copper box from the cornerstone.
Contained inside the box were items typical to people living in 1917 — coins, newspapers, a bible and school handbooks — but to the people in the room Friday afternoon, those everyday possessions brought history to life.
“It was really interesting to see what they would put in it,” Addyson Traggiai, a junior at Butler Senior High School said. “And how they put different stuff like coins and photos of the football teams and such. It really gave us a look back at what’s going on in their time.”
Brian White, superintendent of Butler Area School District, said the district has plans to get high-quality photographs of everything included in the box. The items could eventually be on public display at the district, but White also said administrators are hopeful to get all the items scanned and viewable online by May 8 — the day the capsule would have been placed 108 years ago.
“It’s going to go in the high school and we’ll store it with our transcripts now,” White said. “They have a lot to look through and deal with.”
Martin Rubeo, social studies chairman at Butler Senior High School, said White told him the time capsule would be opened just hours before Fitzpatrick took down the wall. He gathered up four students he had who would potentially be interested in seeing the time capsule unlocked, and brought them to the former middle school with only a few hours notice.
Rubeo said the students in his modern history class would have learned about the era of the time capsule in 10th grade, so the three juniors and one senior students he brought with him had an idea about the 1910s and World War I. While the students were eager to read the newspapers cataloging the days’ events in 1917, Rubeo said the opening of the time capsule also sparked students’ interest to create their own time capsule.
“That’s the cool inspirational aspect of this is now we want to make history for your great-grandkids,” Rubeo said.
The time capsule included a dedication from the school district’s superintendent in 1917, listed as Superintendent Gibson. Even he seemed to realize the significance of the completion of the building, and marked the occasion by pointing out the size and scope of what would become the district’s junior high school.
“We have laid aside our duties and our tasks and the workmen have quieted their busy tools for a short time this afternoon in order that we may perform a symbolic initiatory act in the erection of the most beautiful, the most costly and the most important public building ever erected in Butler Borough or Butler County,” the address said.
Kaden Kozik, a junior at Butler Senior High School, said his family has attended Butler Area School District for four generations, so his ancestors could have been at the district at the time the capsule was installed.
“It’s really cool to see the community perspective from those years,” Kozik said. “This is really cool, because this would have been stuff happening to my great-grandfathers at the time.”
