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The Norwood site was among 30 other parks facilities recommended by county staff earlier this year for evaluation before closing, transferring or more aggressively promoting them.

But Haskell’s students echo her devotion to the Norwood building, calling it convenient and ‘‘perfect.”

Barbara Jacobs, 77, can’t imagine separating Haskell’s class and the building that has been its home since 1961.

Jacobs took her daughter, then 7 years old, to the building every Saturday morning to learn to draw about 40 years ago. After her daughter grew up to be a professional artist living in North Potomac, Jacobs enrolled herself in Haskell’s class. She wanted to see whether she could reverse-inherit her daughter’s talent.

But after comparing Haskell’s class in Friendship Heights with the thrice-weekly lessons at Norwood, Jacobs said the Norwood atmosphere is irreplaceable.

‘‘There’s just something about Norwood that I find is in that particular room, that is the best of all the places that I’ve been,” Jacobs said. It doesn’t hurt that the building is well lit by an abundance of windows, and is conveniently located for seniors in the area.

Fred Walton of Bethesda came to Tuesday morning’s class at Norwood with his oil pastels. Walton is carrying on a family tradition at Norwood; his mother took Haskell’s class at Norwood in the 1970s after she retired.

‘‘Now I’m retired, and I’m taking art classes from the same wonderful teacher,” he said.

The Norwood walls also hold a bizarre history of animal hybrids and turn-of-the-century science experiments.

Scientists at Norwood tinkered with donkeys, dogs, hogs, chicken, zebras, guinea pigs and rats, said Joey Lampl, the cultural resources manager for Montgomery County’s Department of Parks.

Built in the early 1900s on about 20 acres, the Norwood building housed the administrative offices and the laboratory for the Bureau of Animal Industry’s Bethesda Experiment Station.

The years between 1937, when the division transferred to Beltsville, and 1961, when Haskell taught her first art class there, are unaccounted for, Lampl said.

‘‘It has a whole second life,” Lampl said.

She is searching for missing pieces in history, hoping tips from the community will augment her own research.

The county staff report said the county should investigate Norwood’s historical significance, which is why Lampl began digging through the National Archives for correspondence and photographs documenting the building.

She will talk about her findings during a lecture — which she laughingly notes is, literally, a dog and pony show — at 7 tonight at the Norwood building, 4700 Norwood Drive, Bethesda.

Lampl will tell stories about how scientists tried to cross-pollinate breeds with varying degrees of success. The long-eared guinea pig, for example, hasn’t carried into posterity.

‘‘When King Menelik of Abyssinia gave President Theodore Roosevelt a male zebra, [Roosevelt] sent it to Bethesda and encouraged a project to develop a superior, cross bred farm animal,” reads a report on Norwood from the Maryland Historical Trust. ‘‘The zebra was mated to a local mare and the result christened a ‘zebhorse.’”

The farm served practical roles too, advancing research in anthrax and foot-and-mouth disease. At one point it became an ad-hoc food source, providing malnourished children with goat milk, Lampl said.

But ‘‘the farm with its flies and its smells” closed down after neighbors complained to the federal government in the 1930s, according to historical trust records. Norwood was turned over to Montgomery County.

For all its history, Norwood lacks the official historic stamp from the county giving it protection from certain kinds of exterior changes or changes to its immediate surroundings.

Lampl’s lecture may be a precursor to that process.

‘‘We’re only at the stage where we’re doing research where we determine whether we think it meets the criteria,” Lampl said. ‘‘Our initial impression is that it does meet the criteria.”

But to be designated as an historical landmark, the building must be evaluated by the county’s historic preservation staff, then approved by the Historic Preservation Commission, the Planning Board and County Council. Public input is part of that process.

‘‘It’s a way for us, the Department of Parks, to show that we are being good stewards of the building, and that we will do the right thing,” Lampl said. ‘‘It’s a building that probably should have been landmarked long ago but wasn’t.”

Public sentiment about the building’s future has been passionate from the surrounding neighborhood, and downright scared from Haskell and some of her students. They worry the building will be taken away from public use if it becomes an historical landmark.

‘‘Our plea to the Park and Planning [staff] is it gives so much pleasure to the older people, including me,” Haskell said, adding that roughly 70 percent of her students are older than 65. ‘‘There is no other venue.”

Staff recommendations aren’t finalized and have not been adopted by the county.

‘‘I hope that the meeting [tonight] allays all those concerns” about closing the building, Lampl said. ‘‘We recognize that this is a really important building for this community, and we intend to work cooperatively with the community.”