Sayre School to break ground on nearly $10 million building

Lexington’s Sayre School will break ground April 13 on a nearly $10 million building that will house its pre-kindergarten through fourth-grade classrooms, called the Lower School, and its Extended Day program.

The new 37,000-square-foot building on the private school’s downtown Lexington campus at 194 North Limestone will include a state-of-the-art science classroom with a laboratory that opens onto a rooftop patio and garden, allowing students to incorporate the natural environment into their observations and activities, said Stephen Manella, head of school at Sayre.

In addition to the Lower School classrooms and science classrooms and labs, there will be classrooms for music and art, a library and a multi-purpose room in the new building expected to be completed by August 2018, Manella told the Herald-Leader on Wednesday.

“Young children learn from each other, they learn from adults, and they learn from their surroundings where they work and play. The very best learning is happening when you can observe what is almost a dance going on between the children and the space around them. Our Lower School building will be such a place,” Annie Papero, head of Sayre Lower School, said in a statement.

The major construction project won’t result in expansion of the campus, Manella said. He said the current Lower School and Extended Day building, built in 1971, and other structures along the Pleasant Stone Street side of the campus will be torn down. The new building will be on the same ground that Sayre has called home for more than 160 years, he said.

The impending construction will mean short-term changes for some of Sayre’s nearly 550 students. During construction, middle school students will be in a classroom building called “Old Sayre” and the Lower School students will be in the Middle School building.

“Sayre has been a part of this downtown community since the 1850s,” Manella said, and the new building “will be a beautiful addition.”

This story was originally published April 5, 2017 at 5:20 PM with the headline "Sayre School to break ground on nearly $10 million building."