Themes: architectural, community development, education, recreation.

Bancroft School opened April, 1969, amid controversy. Many disapproved of the "radical" departure from traditional school design,and the new educational emphasis on "open classrooms" around which this building was designed.

Architect William D. Warner treated this building as an exercise in learning - children could look up at the heavy timbered trusses, the exposed heating system, and understand how a building was made and how facilities worked within a structure. There were conservative townspeople who said $1,975,000 was a "lot to pay for a bunch of boxes".

Classrooms were in three 2-story barn-like "lofts", all designed around a library or resource center. The exposed wooden deck melded with the wooded setting. There are visual contrasts in color, and in the varied volumes, spaces, textures and unusual shapes. Pebbled walls and the open sky-light contributed to the emphasis on a unity with nature, almost in an Oriental sense, aesthetically.

Leominister Engineering Co. served as contractors. Most of the school's former critics would now champion its success, both architecturally and educationally.

Bancroft School was found to have structural issues too costly to repair. A new school was built in 2013 in front to the the old school building. The new school opened in September 2014. The summer of 2014, in early July, this building was razed.