Last Lombard College Building May Be Demolished

The one surviving Lombard College building is a gymnasium that has been used by a middle school in recent years.

A rundown 1913 gymnasium that a school district in Galesburg, Ill., wants to demolish is the only remaining building of Lombard College, which closed in 1930. The building, now inhabited by bats, has a small gym upstairs and locker rooms below, according to the Galesburg Register-Mail.

The gymnasium has been used in recent years by the Lombard Middle School, but now its water and sewer lines have been disconnected and the Lombard Middle School football team has been told by health and fire officials to stop using the building as a changing facility. The school district estimates that demolishing the building because it is a hazard will cost $300,000.

The local YMCA backed out of a plan to buy and rehabilitate the building because doing so would have been too expensive, the Register-Mail says. The Galesburg Historical Society was also interested in the building, but was told that the school district did not want to give up the land it sits on.

Knox College, to which some Lombard students transferred when their institution closed, said it would be interested in having the gym’s cornerstone if the school district would donate it.