Maine North High School was a public secondary school in Des Plaines, Illinois, northwest of Chicago. It was located in unincorporated Maine Township, part of Maine Township High School District 207 which includes Maine East, Maine West, and Maine South High Schools. Opened in 1970, it closed just eleven years later in 1981, and served parts of Des Plaines, Glenview, and Niles.
As student population shrank, the decision came down to closing Maine East or Maine North. Maine East, the oldest school in the district, opened in 1929, but also had considerable numbers of alumni and students with the S.O.S. (Save Our School) campaign pushing to keep it open. On November 17, 1980, the Board voted 4-3 to close Maine North by 1981, citing that it was not only the smallest school, but the least centrally located of the schools in the district. In October, the Board voted to close the school at the end of the 1980â€"81 school year.
The school was subsequently sold along with the District's administrative building, which had its offices relocated to Maine South High School.
Later uses
After its closing, Maine North was used for location shooting of the 1985 movie The Breakfast Club, filmed in the spring of 1984. The library scenes in the movie were shot in the school gymnasium, where a set was constructed. A plaque downstairs in the building commemorates the movie being shot there.
The school was also used as a training facility for the Chicago Blitz of the short-lived United States Football League and as a mortuary college. In 1986, the school's interior was featured in another movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Today
The Maine North High School building is now used as a district headquarters for the Illinois State Police, a communications center for the Cook County Sheriff's Department, an Illinois Lottery payment office, the largest regional office of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the Northern Illinois office of the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board as well as regional offices for other various Illinois state agencies including the Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation, Central Management Services, and the Illinois Department of Agriculture. The land near the school that was used for athletic fields has been redeveloped into townhouses.
References
External links
- Illinois State Police District 3 (Chicago District)
- Maine Township High School District 207
- Maine North High School Alumni website (thru Maine East)
- Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
- Notable Alumni: Rickards Family story
