The long-vacant Central School building on Northampton’s Main Street, whose history dates back to the 19th century, including as the town’s first high school, could shortly be converted into apartments - 12 one- and two-bedroom units on the two floors.

Tom Kishbaugh, president of GeorgeAnn Custom Homes Inc., Bath, went before Northampton Borough Planning Commission March 8 with a sketch plan to transform the brick structure into a dozen apartments on its two floors.

Since there was no vote taken by the planning commission, whose members saw just an outline of what is projected for the project, Kishbaugh indicated the changes would include hardwood flooring, central air and an upgraded heating system.

Where past developers failed in bringing the project to fruition, Kishbaugh said, in seeking to alleviate the neighborhood’s concern of vehicle traffic, the plans call for no vehicles on Line Alley, one-way traffic from 15th Street to Main Street and suitable fencing.

“We decided no access off of Line Alley,” Bryan A. Ring, of AASA Land Surveyors, Allentown, told the planning commission.

Kishbaugh said he and his representatives talked to neighbors and listened to their concerns before coming to the planning commission.

The board was told Kishbaugh’s plan for the parking of tenants’ vehicles exceeds the borough’s requirement.

There will be two main entrances from the existing front doors and a side handicapped entrance.

The property is in a C-1 commercial transition zone.

Kishbaugh agreed to place a plaque on the building’s exterior noting its historic significance.

Built in 1885, the brick structure first was Allen Township High School. The borough was a compilation of villages - Stemton, Newport and Siegfried - and became a borough in 1902. There were four students in the first graduating class and one teacher.

For reasons unknown, it was later called the Brooklyn School. And in 1910, the high school moved to Lincoln Avenue. The old building on Main Street housed elementary school children for years.

The property during World War II was a drop-off site for metals, food cans and materials for the war effort.

In the late 1940s and into the 1950s, it was a teenage center.

When the high school on Laubach Avenue underwent renovations in the 1980s, the 10th-grade class attended the Central School building.

Kishbaugh expects to appear before the planning commission next month with final plans.