Halsey School playground, c. 1925.
In 1888, a four-room school called West School was built on the corner of Deerpath Road and Oakwood Avenue, right across from the future site of City Hall. After a couple additions, the school was renamed Halsey School after prominent local educator and historian John J. Halsey.
Halsey School held a kindergarten for five-year olds and a “junior” kindergarten for four-year-olds, long before these progressive programs were instituted in public schools. Primarily used as an elementary school for kindergarten through fourth grade, the school was demolished in 1954 when Deer Path School opened. Eventually the site became a city parking lot.
In the early 1950s, Lake Forest was part of Operation Skywatchers, an Air Force network of ground observers in 36 states. The observation post on Halsey School (Coca Nectar 0 1 Red) was manned twenty-four hours a day by 75 local citizens. Just as an airplane passed overhead, its direction and type were called into a center in Chicago so that the craft could be charted on maps there.