Photos: Machon School Time Capsule To Be Swept Away

Inside the door at the far end of the Machon School someone wrote June 19, 2007 on a chalkboard.

The message was likely one of the last things written at the elementary school before it closed.

Other reminders of its last days include student farewells hanging from walls.

Eye-catching items include the jungle theme mural in the gym and the handmade tributes to local and national heroes that hang in the library.

The school itself is largely a broken time capsule, with books, paper, art supplies and such strewn across its floors or stacked.

Chairs and desks and other furniture sit in rooms. Oddly, a day bed is in the foyer near the main entrance.

The school's intercom modular sits on a stand in the main office.  Cubby holes are labeled with the names of teachers.

A piano sits on its side in a small room, the keys silent to the touch.

All of that is getting cleaned out this week, said Director Gino Cresta.

If people are interested in claiming books, they will be available today, he said.

When the school district handed over the building to the town earlier this year the town got more than just a building, it got all the contents that remained inside.

Now comes the arduous task of clearing out those contents.

They need to be cleaned out, the director said, because the property has become a hangout for young people. And the contents are a fire hazard, he said.

The town is getting some much needed clean-up help from the Essex County Department of Corrections.

Inmates in the prerelease program at The Farm, an Essex County minimum security correctional facility in Lawrence, cleared out the upstairs of the Machon School on Monday and will continue to work on the clean-up this week.

Town Selectmen David Van Dam, chief of staff for the mayor in Haverhill, arranged for the assistance.

Machon was a neighborhood school attended by generations of Upper Swampscott students.

DPW Director Gino Cresta, and his dad, Gino, and his son, Gino, all went to Machon.

The school was built in 1921 and named after a longtime teacher, Emma Machon, who taught at the nearby Essex Street School in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, said Swampscott Historian Lou Gallo.