100 E Foreman St

This is the former Irving School at 100 E Foreman St in El Reno, Canadian County, Oklahoma, a one-story brick school of 13,626 square feet built in 1930 on a full city block, 25 miles west of Oklahoma City. The remarks say the City of El Reno is preparing to demolish it, the city has agreed to let the seller handle the demolition instead, and the seller wants a buyer who will clear the site and redevelop it. The listing files it as a single-family residence with five bedrooms and no baths, no heat and no cooling, on one acre. It was listed on April 27, 2026 at $169,999 and cut seven times to $59,999 on September 9. The county record shows it sold for $85,000 on May 9, 2025 and for $79,900 in April 2019. The El Reno Tribune reported on August 17, 2026, under the headline “Final bell?”, that the old Irving School had been condemned after the owner was given more than a year to make repairs.

From the street

The photos show a U-shaped brick school with a green metal roof, a parapet over the arched front door with IRVING cut into the stone, long walls of steel sash windows, and a ramp with a pipe rail. From across Foreman Street the two wings run the length of the block behind a chain-link fence, with a utility pole at the curb and the walk cracked through in front of the door.

From the air

The aerials show the school on the south side of its block with the play yard behind it, houses on every side, and a lake in the distance. The listing calls it a corner lot. A previous listing on a commercial site called it surrounded by four streets. The roof is one green metal surface over the U, with a flat section inside it.

The entrance

Inside the front doors the floor is hardwood, a transom sits over the door and the daylight comes in from the street. The front rooms have their doors off the hinges and leaning on the walls, a chalkboard frame on one wall, and openings knocked through to the rooms behind.

The auditorium

The auditorium keeps its columns, a tiled ceiling stained through, and a stage with a wooden proscenium and a curtain. Piles of debris and a pool table sit on the hardwood floor, a stack of doors leans by the far wall, and the ceiling has come down in places along the edges.

The classrooms

The classrooms have had their ceilings stripped to the joists, with the roof deck and the wiring open above. Each has the same wall of steel sash windows, a ceiling fan, a cast iron radiator under the sill and two doors to the hall. Tools, a paint sprayer, buckets and a few tables and counters sit on the floors, and one room has a tile wainscot under the windows with the plaster gone above it.

The restrooms and the damage

One room has a toilet standing on the floor beside a cabinet. The restrooms are stripped to the fixtures, with sinks pulled off the wall and two toilets set on the floor under a window. A rear corner shows water damage running down the wall and the ceiling tiles hanging down over a radiator.

The yard and the rear

Outside, the concrete play yard is cracked through with grass in the joints, and the rear elevation shows a chimney and a section of wall open to the weather beside it, with boards and pipe on the ground.

The site

The remarks in the 2025 listing, which sold the building to the current seller, said the site was where the 1901 drawing for the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache lands was held, the last of the big Oklahoma openings, with the crowd gathered around the Irving School of that day. The building on the block now dates to 1930. It is not on the National Register, which lists fifteen properties in and around El Reno and none of them a school on Foreman Street or a downtown district.

The facts

What to know before you call

You are buying a demolition order. The remarks say the city is preparing to demolish the building and has agreed to let the seller do it instead, and the seller wants a buyer who will take that on. The Tribune reported the condemnation on August 17. Under Oklahoma law a city can demolish a building it has declared dilapidated after notice and a hearing, and the cost becomes a lien on the land. Ask the city for the condemnation order, the hearing record, the deadline the seller was given, whether the deadline transfers to a new owner or restarts, whether the city has already contracted or bid the work, and what the city’s own estimate is. If the city’s timeline runs out before yours does, the city demolishes it and bills the land, and you owe the bill.

The building is a 1930 school, and that governs the demolition. Federal asbestos rules apply to the demolition of any school or commercial building regardless of size. Before a wall comes down, a licensed inspector has to survey the building for asbestos, any found has to be removed by a licensed abatement contractor, and the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality has to be notified ten working days ahead. A 1930 school with steam radiators, a tiled auditorium ceiling and tile wainscot in the classrooms is the kind of building those rules were written for. Get the survey before you bid, and get demolition and abatement bids in writing before you price the land, because on a $59,999 purchase the demolition can cost more than the building.

Bought for $85,000 sixteen months ago, condemned since, asking $59,999. The seller paid $85,000 in May 2025, listed at $169,999 in April 2026, and has cut the price seven times in five months while the city moved toward condemnation. The record before that is two failed attempts to sell it as a building: $300,000 in 2004 with no sale, and $175,000 in 2017 down to $79,900 in 2019. The price is now below the last two sales and the remarks say it is priced for the land. Ask what the seller did to the building between May 2025 and August 2026, because the photos show ceilings removed and fixtures pulled, which is either the start of a renovation or the start of a strip-out.

A school listed as a five-bedroom house. The listing files the property as a single-family residence with five bedrooms and no bathrooms. The county carries it as an elementary school building in property class UC and the remarks say it is zoned residential. A lender will not treat a condemned school as a house, and an appraiser will not count classrooms as bedrooms. Ask the county what UC means on this roll, ask the city what R-2 allows on a full block, and ask both before you assume multi-unit housing is a use by right, because the remarks tell you to verify every intended use with the city.

One acre, 22 lots, or two and a half acres. The listing says one acre. The county says Block 11 of the Hickox Addition, 22 lots. The 2025 listing said 2.5 acres. A full block of platted 25-foot lots with the alleys vacated is more than one acre and less than two and a half. Ask for the plat, the vacation ordinances for any alleys, and a survey, because the buildable area after the school is gone is the whole point of the purchase.

Oklahoma taxes after a sale. Oklahoma counties assess at a fraction of market value, and Canadian County uses 12 percent: the $99,545 value here becomes $11,945 assessed, and the 106.45-mill rate makes the $1,252 bill. The state caps annual growth in the taxable value at 5 percent for property like this and 3 percent for homesteads and farms, and the cap comes off when the property sells, so the assessor can revalue to market the year after closing. The record shows exactly that: the assessment more than doubled in 2020 after the 2019 sale, and the bill went from $732 to $1,847. It dropped by a third in 2025 when the building value was cut, which fits a building falling apart. A homestead exemption takes $1,000 off the assessed value and applies only to an owner who lives there, which nobody will in a condemned school. Once the building is gone the land alone is what gets assessed, and once something new goes up, the new value does.

Tornado corridor, and a building nobody will insure. El Reno sits in the middle of central Oklahoma’s tornado track. An EF5 passed near the city in May 2011 and the widest tornado on record, 2.6 miles across, crossed the country south of town in May 2013. Hail claims are routine in Canadian County and Oklahoma carriers now widely settle roof claims at actual cash value rather than replacement cost. None of that is the immediate problem here, because a vacant condemned building will not get a standard policy at all. Ask what coverage the seller has, expect to buy a vacant building or builder’s risk policy for the demolition period, and price the insurance on whatever you build next before you buy the land.

No heat, no cooling, no utilities listed. The listing gives heating none and cooling none, and lists no water, sewer, power or gas. The photos show cast iron radiators, so the building once had a boiler, and a chimney stands at the rear. Nothing says whether the services are connected, cut or capped. Demolition requires every utility disconnected at the property line, and redevelopment requires them brought back. Ask the city which taps and meters exist, whether the sewer lateral is usable, and what a new service costs.

Not on the National Register, and check the zoning map for two letters. The Irving School is not on the National Register, and El Reno has no listed downtown district. The city does have a Historical Preservation overlay it can apply to any tract by council designation, marked on the zoning map with the suffix HP, and inside that overlay demolition needs a certificate of appropriateness from the Historical Preservation Commission. The listing says residential zoning with no suffix. Ask the city whether Block 11 carries HP or is on the commission’s inventory, because a designation started before your permit application would stop the demolition while it is pending. The 1901 lottery site is the reason someone might try.

Access and parking. The listing calls it a corner lot on E Foreman St. The county’s address is 100 E Foreman Rd and the map calls it East Foreman Drive. The photos show a cracked concrete yard behind the school and street parking in front. There is no photo of a driveway, a curb cut or a parking lot.

Thirty-one photos, the listing’s full set. Zillow and Redfin carry the same 31 in the same order and we used all of them, at the 1,024-pixel width the listing supplies. There is no photo of the boiler room, the roof from above except in the aerials, the attic, or the interior of the rear section that is open to the weather. Nothing is virtually staged, and nothing is furnished: every room is empty except for debris, tools and fixtures on the floor.

You can see everything else we have listed on the properties page. This is our first Oklahoma property. For other buildings that are more site than structure we have a gutted house with no bridge across its creek in Yancey County, North Carolina and a house on a city lot in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.

To ask about this one, call Casey Trejo at Cultivate Real Estate on 405-249-3401 and reference MLS 1226364. Tell them where you saw it.