The Clayton School District was created November 4,1890. With continually increasing population in the town due mainly to the presence of the Washington Brick & Lime Company, by 1914 the town was in need of its third school. A bond issue was passed that year and Spokane architect Charles Wood was immediately commissioned to design the new school. The design that he proposed was American Renaissance, and construction began immediately, with the school receiving its first students in the first week of February, 1915.
The two storey brick building measures 72 feet wide and 48 feet deep with over 6,900 square feet of space on the first and second floors. It has a low-pitched hip roof with wide, overhanging eaves, a prominent corbelled entry arch, and multiple rows of tall windows. Above the entry is a low open bell tower with the bell still in place. The main entry doors themselves are recessed, forming an enclosed entryway, the arched entrance of which has a ram's head figure for a keystone. The interior retains its original woodwork, including recessed panel doors and a beautiful wooden staircase and railing leading to the second floor.
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The building housed grades one through twelve until 1939, when the high school children were bused to Deer Park High School. In 1955 when the Clayton School District merged with the larger Deer Park School District the seventh and eighth grades students were transported to a new location. Later on all the other grades except fifth and sixth were bused to Deer Park, while fifth and sixth from that district were transported to Clayton. Upon completion of Arcadia School in Deer Park in 1972, after 57 years of service, the Clayton School ceased to house
students."
(From The National Register).
It is today one of the two campuses of The
Homelink Program for the Deer Park School District, which is a home schooling enrichment program.
Photos were taken from northwest of the school, looking southeast.