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SKOWHEGAN — The memories were flowing when a group of former teachers and parent volunteers gathered at Margaret Chase Smith School this week.

They were taking a look, perhaps for the last time before the school is demolished in the coming weeks, at an artwork they made with their students in the 1990s: an archway and two murals that livened up the school’s drab, long main hallway.

But there was one thing they couldn’t remember: Where exactly they left a time capsule, which they remembered being placed inside one of the columns.

“We don’t remember the container,” said Maureen Calder, one of the former Margaret Chase Smith teachers. “We don’t remember what’s in it.”

And it turns out, after an exhaustive search that culminated in current teachers taking sledgehammers to the columns, memory can be a fickle thing.

The “time capsule” may have actually been the four archway columns themselves, inside which students had written short notes on wooden panels.

“Now that we’ve seen all the writing, we’ve realized that’s what they perceived the capsule to be,” Laura Richter, who taught on a team at the school with Calder and Mary Stuart in the 1990s, said Wednesday after the discovery.

The team — dubbed CRS, for Calder, Richter, Stuart, or, aptly for Monday’s gathering, “Can’t Remember ‘Stuff’” — returned to the school Monday to view the artwork they made with their students and try to remember where the time capsule was inside of it.

The school is set to be demolished within a few weeks as a new, $75 million consolidated elementary school for Skowhegan-based Maine School Administrative District 54 is set to open next door on Heselton Street. Friday was the last day students were in class.

Superintendent of Schools Jon Moody said in an email that abatements for asbestos and hazardous materials will happen in the next weeks, and how long that process takes will dictate the timeline for when the school building will come down.

“It could be quick,” Moody wrote.

Of the schools to be consolidated into the new building, which comes at no cost to local property taxpayers and also includes an early childhood wing, Margaret Chase Smith is the only one set to be razed. Bloomfield Elementary is to be repurposed, along with North Elementary, which had initially been planned to be taken down for the construction of a bus garage that now has a new location.

Calder, who was the math teacher on the team, said between 1993 and 1996 the three came up with the idea of creating the art project with their students as part of an interdisciplinary approach to learning. Several parent volunteers, including David Larkin, Roy Slamm and Fred Tennenbaum, helped out.

“We always did some kind of project at the end of our units, whatever we were studying,” Calder said. “That’s how this came about.”

The first part of the project, the arch in the hallway outside their classrooms, coincided with a unit about the Romans, at least according to Calder. The others remembered it being related to a unit about the Renaissance.

The project expanded to the murals, and the rest of the school participated, the teachers recalled.

Larkin, who was at the gathering Monday, said he was already helping out at the school with a class when he was enlisted to help Calder, Richter and Stuart.

“The idea was to break up the space,” Larkin said. “And also put a kind of unusual experience in the midst of it.”

Larkin designed the arch and columns, work that he said although was not major, required approval from the state fire marshal’s office.

He also helped the students with painting the murals, which feature stenciled animals, fish and bugs adapted from photographs in National Geographic magazines. Students voted to make one mural jungle-themed and the other aquatic-themed. Some of the paint used is only visible under a blacklight.

“A lot of this was guided by the kids,” Larkin said.

At some point along the way, students put together the “time capsule,” the former teachers said. They could not remember much about it — they remembered items inside, if any, would have been things like baseball cards — but seemed certain it was hidden somewhere.

“I was in this classroom, and they came running in and said, ‘The capsules are going in,’” Richter, who taught social studies, said. “And I thought it was in this column right behind him,” she continued, motioning toward it.

Calder and Larkin said they did some reconnaissance at the school before this week’s meeting to try to locate the capsule. They were unsuccessful.

On Tuesday, Randy Wallace, a bus mechanic for MSAD 54, was called in to drill holes in the four columns to look inside. He also found nothing.

“The guys drilled and drilled, and they said, ‘Nah, all there is is writing,’” Richter said Wednesday via telephone. “And they didn’t think much of it, and they left.”

But later Tuesday, teachers wrapping up their final days at the Margaret Chase Smith School took it upon themselves — with sledgehammers — to take the columns apart, Richter said. Inside, they found the handwritten notes.

Richter said Larkin was the one supervising the project with the students, while the teachers were in classrooms, so she never actually saw what went inside the “capsules.”

Calder, reached via telephone Wednesday, said she still remembers students placing small items inside.

District staff overseeing construction of the new school and demolition of the old one met with the group Monday to discuss how the demolition crew will try to be mindful of the capsule’s potential whereabouts when they get to work. It’s unclear what will happen now that the columns have already been dismantled.

David Leavitt, support services manager for MSAD 54, told the group that he heard there may be another time capsule buried under the playground, too.

When the school is reduced to rubble, the murals and arch are set to be demolished with it.

“It’s kind of sad, right?” said Stuart, who taught science. “Art is ephemeral.”