Ainsworth Then and Now: John Wood School

1962, and 2015


(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

"Now" is a relative term. Looking through the photos on my computer (since I can't go out and research), I was amazed to find that in the five years since I took the "now" photo, I never got around to putting together this post.

I'm guessing that the earlier photo was indeed taken when the school was newly completed in 1962. The little village of Ainsworth must have been tremendously proud of it.


Back in 2013, I did a "then and now" involving a photo that was identified by handwritten notes as the John Wood School, but that I thought more likely to be the Jonas E. Salk School in Merrillville. I'm leaving that post up (with a disclaimer) just to remind myself, and all amateur historians, that you can't believe everything you are told.

John Wood School ca. 1962

The John Wood School looks freshly built in this aerial view:


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The image is not otherwise dated.

Here is the same image with a couple of features marked.



The old Foreman house is still standing, though its outbuildings (aside from the pump house) are gone. I have marked the location of the old wooden Ainsworth school according to what I have been told. I can't clearly see it in those trees, though I do see something that looks like a small building.

The Triebess house lies just outside the left border of the photo. That house was built in 1849 according to the county records. If that date is correct, we may also call it the old Horace Marble house (per the 1874 Plat Map) and maybe even the old Booth house, since members of the Booth family owned that land in 1848 and 1850, per Early Land Sales, Lake County.

The white house along the left border was built in 1939 according to county records, and I haven't yet found out yet who built it.

Ainsworth Then and Now: John Wood School(?)

[5/15/2020 update] The 1962 image is not John Wood School. I don't know what it is, but it's not John Wood School. You want to see John Wood School in 1962? Go here.

Circa 1962 and 2013.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.

According to the handwritten caption on the first photo, this is the John Wood school, and the school looks pretty freshly built. The lettering on the building is not clear; however, to me it looks more like "Jonas E. Salk" than "John Wood." I would never have recognized the building — and what are all those structures behind it? It seems to have been placed in a densely built suburban neighborhood. Yet the 1965 aerial view of the school does not show those houses, or whatever they are.

I am mystified. It would be very nice to have a photo of the just-built John Wood School, but I'm not sure I do here.