In May 1913, the citizens of Haverford Township and the school board approved funding for four new schools. The new Preston Public School was described as “A six-room building is to be erected on a two-acre plot of land which the board has secured some distance from the old site.” (1, p. 74). The "old site" they were referring to is the Haverford Public School 5 property, previously at 747 Buck Lane. The Preston School was constructed on the land Ann Martin previously owned and was located where the Martin Avenue parking lot is now. The construction of the new building did not commence until sometime after May 1913, so it is likely that the school first opened its doors either in 1915 or 1916. The old schoolhouse on Buck Lane was abandoned.

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     The facade of Preston Public School looked very much like the following Schools: Brookline, the original Chestnutwold, and Oakmont. There is one sure way to identify the Preston School from the other schools and that is the Preston building had a half-round window just below the peak of its roof (2).

 

     In July 1959, Haverford Township made the decision to permanently close Preston School. From then on, the children who lived in the area went to the newly built Coopertown School (2).

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    By October 1972, the Preston Public School building on Martin Avenue had been recently demolished. The building had outlived its usefulness. Neighborhood children were being bused to other public schools in Haverford Township (3). The building, however, did not go down without a fight; vocal neighbors wanted the building to become a library. Haverford Township said the building would be too costly to maintain and proposed selling the land to a developer. Fortunately, some members of the community convinced the township more houses would not be in the best interest of the neighborhood since the children in the area needed even more ground on which to play. Haverford Township relented and added the land to the existing acreage of Preston Field Park. (4).

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Sources:

1.  Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the year ending July 7, 1913, published in 1914

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2.  Blu Taylor, Information Technology Manager, Haverford School District, Havertown, PA  
 
3. The date Preston Public School building was torn down was provided by Clarissa Dillon who distinctly remembers the school building being torn down in the month of October 1972. She said she remembers this date clearly because she had just bought a house and moved into the area.
 

4.  Beatrice Hayes, who grew up in the Preston Community