MOUNT VERNON – When Petula Clark topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964, she sang about the joys of going Downtown:
So go downtown
Things will be great when you’re downtown
Don’t wait a minute more, downtown
Everything is waiting for you, downtown
The Knox County Educational Service Center (ESC) has taken Clark’s advice, relocating its central office to the Woodward Opera House Annex at 107 S. Main St.
For the last 22 years the ESC office had been in the Knox Technical Center adjacent to the Knox County Career Center on Martinsburg Road. The office soon will be occupied by the Career Center.
“The Career Center has been looking for additional space,” said Timm Mackley, now in his 16th year as ESC superintendent.
“Demand for enrollment in their programs continues to climb. The Career Center wants to accommodate as many students as possible. That is a good thing. The ESC wanted to help make that possible.
“We are looking forward to our new location in the Woodward Opera House Annex, one of Mount Vernon’s historic buildings.”
The ESC office will front on South Main Street, its rooms framed by the iconic triple gable parapets. The ESC, which is leasing the site from the Woodward Development Corporation, closed its former site last Thursday to facilitate the moving of furniture and equipment.
It will reopen in The Annex on Jan. 28. Now The Woodward Annex, the building was known as the Rogers Block when it was built in 1884.
As noted by the Woodward Development Corporation, the building was constructed and owned by C. G. Cooper, whose steam engine manufacturing firm became Cooper Industries.
George Rogers, a colonel in the Civil War, bought the site in 1882 to construct a mercantile building, but he died before construction began.
In his will he designated Cooper, his brother-in-law and business partner, as the trustee of his estate. Cooper completed construction of the three-story structure.
Knox ESC conducts background checks and hires classroom aides, substitute teachers, therapists and other personnel for the five county public school districts, the Career Center and Clear Fork Valley.
Now in its 111th year, the ESC also operates its own preschools in Mount Vernon, Centerburg, East Knox and Fredericktown and the Learning Center, a K-12 alternative school in the former Mount Vernon West Elementary.