Crow Island School is a flat roofed, one story, common brick and redwood, multi-windowed, steel frame structure that incorporates the functionalism, simplicity, and flexible planning of the International Style. Designed by the firms of Eliel and Eero Saarinen and Perkins, Wheeler & Will under the direction of progressive educator Carleton W. Washburne, then Superintendent of Winnetka Public Schools, it has served as a public grammar school and preschool since it opened in 1940. Preceding the general building hiatus in the United States during World War II, Crow Island School provided a model of a modern progressive school for the building boom that accompanied the baby boom in the postwar era.