The Model School, as the Lida Lee Tall School was originally named, was primarily used as a campus demonstration elementary in the Maryland State Normal School, with the purpose to help train teachers. It began with the act of 1865 by the General Assembly of Maryland which provided for a “uniform system of free public schools for the State of Maryland.” That same act stipulated that the State Superintendent create a model primary and grammar school. Consequently, the first Lida Lee Tall School was opened in a rented house on Broadway, Baltimore City, in September 1866 under the supervision of Mary Borgman, and was conducted by one of the teachers of the State Normal School with the assistance of a number of students.

After only one year, the Model School was moved to a bigger house on Fayette Street. Then, in 1872, the school was moved once again to the Athenaeum Building at Charles and Franklin Streets. This was the first time that the Model School was housed in the same building as the State Normal School. With the relocation of the Maryland State Normal School to Towson in September 1915, the Model School was moved and housed in the basement and first floor of Stephens Hall. Although the new name of Normal Elementary School was introduced, the name of Model School persisted. Beginning in 1916, the Normal Elementary School becomes a free public school, with Baltimore County paying the salaries of several teachers, and the state covering the remaining expenses.

By the mid-1920s, around 260 children were enrolled in the school. With the rapid growth, an elementary school library was opened in February 1926, and by 1928, needs for better facilities became evident. Eventually, the Legislature of 1931 passed a bill to appropriate funds for the building of a new elementary school. Up to this time, the Normal Elementary School had occupied rooms in the Administration Building, sharing the space with the regular campus students. The new elementary school building was occupied in February 1933, the present-day Van Bokkelen Hall. Unfortunately, due to the financial depression engulfing the country, enrollment and budget cuts affected the operations of the entire school, and some of the staff in the Normal Elementary School was laid off.

In 1931, the State Normal School changed its program from a two-year to a three-year course of study, and then to a four-year degree-granting college in 1934. The following year its name was officially changed to the State Teachers College at Towson. These changes required rapid modifications and revisions in the Normal Elementary School’s curriculum. In 1942, the Normal Elementary School was renamed the Lida Lee Tall School, after the seventh principal and the first president of the State Teachers College at Towson, Lida Lee Tall. By 1959, plans for a new building were approved, and eventually erected in 1960, which was to accommodate around 550 students.

In 1968, the Board of Trustees of the Maryland State Colleges took steps to phase out its campus elementary (laboratory) schools, leading to reevaluations of the experiences, opportunities, and benefits of campus-affiliated laboratory schools. The Lida Lee Tall School was again threatened with closure in 1974, when similar schools in the state were shut down, but was mainly spared due to its historical significance, and the administrators agreeing to make the student body, as well as faculty, more diversified. The school was also directed to conduct more educational research, and become a greater resource for other agencies and schools.

The state’s budget reductions for higher education in the early 1980s resulted in yet another attempt to close the school by the Board of Trustees. In February 1981, a public hearing was held regarding the fate of the Lida Lee Tall School. More than 500 people attended the hearing to show their support of the school, and more than 50 speakers testified for its continuance. A petition was also endorsed by more than 400 full-time faculty from various departments within the University. Nonetheless, the Board of Trustees voted to close the school, leading to the request by Towson State University to have a separate Board and the present one dissolved. Accordingly, House Bill 1494 and Senate Bill 610 were introduced and passed by the 1982 General Assembly in support of the continued operation of the Lida Lee Tall School. The school ceased to be a program of the University, but utilized by students and faculty in teacher education. It became an independent elementary school, controlled by a new administration, the Education Coordinating Committee (ECC).

The Lida Lee Tall School, which by the early 1970s was referred to as the Lida Lee Tall Learning Resources Center, ceased its operations in 1991.