W.C. Klitzing Memorial Heritage Park, often called simply Heritage Park and known locally to many as “The Train Park,” is named after former mayor, school board member, and City Attorney Walter C. Klitzing. The Heritage Park was the site of the “old” school, the original wing being built in 1904-1905 as a High School. In 1911, it became the first accredited school in Effingham County. A new wing was added in 1928, making it a combination Grade/High School. It became the Grade School exclusively when the “new” High School opened for the 1953/1954 school year. The last year the “old” school was used was for the 1975/1976 school year. It was eventually demolished several years later and the ground was made into a park. It has play equipment, a skateboard area, several covered picnic tables, a basketball court, and restrooms. Some of the school’s play equipment is still being used–notice the monkey bars and the merry-go-round. The basketball court is still there, plus the tennis court, which is now used by skate-boarders. The cornerstone is the only remaining piece of the building located at Klitzing Park.
The Diamond Point School is a historic one-room school house in Nowata County, Oklahoma, at the junction of county roads 409 and 245 near Nowata, OK. Built in 1919 and used through 1968, it was constructed of red brick and has a bell tower in one corner. It is set within a 1-acre school yard which includes the original playground equipment, such as teeter-totters, a wooden merry-go-round, a slide, and a swingset. The grounds also include boys and girls outhouses and a more modern building which includes a kitchen and lunchroom. The school serves as a museum, is open for tour by appointment, and is used for reunions, meetings, and weddings. It is also used by local schools for “A Day at Diamond Point,” a program giving fourth grade students the experience of students in a one-room country schoolhouse during the 1950s. The old Diamond Point School was restored in 1996 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. The listing included four contributing buildings: the school, a combination coalhouse and garage, and two privies. A concrete block pumphouse was deemed non-contributing.
This unique two-story springhouse, dating back to the late 1700s, served two very different functions. The lower level, built near a spring, was used as a watering room for both man and beast, and because it remained cool throughout the year, was used later as a dairy barn for storing crocks of milk. The upper level of this structure served as a schoolhouse for many years (well into the middle 1800’s). The Springhouse originally stood at Fort Finney, where Cincinnati Gas and Electric (Duke Energy) now has a power plant. Historians indicate that in 1786, the Shawnee Indians signed the first treaty with the whites, known as the “Treaty of Fort Finney,” inside this dwelling.
In, 1870, the owner of the farm land on which the springhouse stood started a dairy farm. He built a large barn over the springhouse, unknowingly preserving it for future generations. The springhouse remained hidden away in the dairy barn until it was moved from its original nearby location where Fort Finney once stood on the Ohio River, to the present location of Shawnee Lookout Park near Cleves, Ohio, and restored by the Park District in 1975. It might be one of the oldest buildings in the Cincinnati area. A full size color replica photo of the the 1786 Treaty of Fort Finney is hanging in the stone springhouse today, courtesy of the US Bureau of Archives.
The Alderman School District #78, located eleven miles north of Valley City, North Dakota, was built in 1925–26. Sitting on 1 acre, it has also been known as the Ashtabula Township Hall, as Barnes County Polling Precinct #10, as Ashtabula Lakers 4-H Clubhouse, and as 32 BA-0159. The building served as a one-room rural school from 1928 to 1959. It is well preserved and embodies in its architectural details many regulations that reflected current best practices for rural education, such as best natural lighting, best heating and ventilation, blackboards, and best sanitation practices of the time. From 1959 to 2004, it served as the Ashtabula Township Hall and was listed with the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on June 25, 2013.
Jarvisburg Colored School is a historic school building for African-American students located at Jarvisburg, Currituck County, North Carolina. First built as a one-room school in 1868 on land donated by Mr. William Hunt Sr, an educated African American farmer in Currituck, His gift of land included property for a church. Replaced in the 1890s with a two-room building and again expanded in 1911 to its current size, it was in service from 1868 until 1950 when Currituck opened a Consolidated School and closed all the small African American county schools. The Jarvisburg Colored School is a two-story, frame building built of cypress wood with Queen Anne style design elements. It has a gable roof and features a pyramidal roofed bell tower with the original four foot wooden spire. It last housed a school in 1950. Today, the Jarvisburg Colored School serves as a Museum to share the stories of former students and histories of all the Colored Schools in Currituck County, North Carolina. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
Buttermilk Flat Schoolhouse No. 22 is a historic one-room school building located at the Town Orleans in Jefferson County, New York. It is a 1+1⁄2-story, rectangular (20 feet by 30 feet) clapboard-sided frame structure built in the 1850’s, about 1850. One of many one room schoolhouses that dotted rural Orleans during the 19th century, the building is significant because it is one of two remaining schoolhouses in Orleans sitting on their original site. The interior of the building has also remained unchanged since it was used as a school. The schoolhouse still stands, although it has remained abandoned since it ceased being a school in the 1930’s. It was last used as a school in 1932. The structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
The schoolhouse was built in the early 1930’s by the WPA. The foundation was hand dug and the walls are poured concrete. The boards used to make the forms were later used for the roof decking. It was originally designed as just a box, but the locals insisted that it look more “Neo Pueblo”, so non-functional buttresses and fake vigas were added. The schoolhouse is 2 classrooms and a gym.
The “gym” is 23″ x 75.5″, and for basketball, the walls were out-of-bounds. The gym was only accessible through a 4 foot opening from the front hallway, where the spectators were relegated (exterior doors to the gym were added only after the building was no longer a school). Moms would sit on either side of the hallway, each being able to see 1 hoop to keep score. Surprisingly, there are very few reports of broken windows.
The Schoolhouse was the natural concrete gray until the late 50’s, when the residents decided it should be painted. They picked out a lovely shade of blue, but when the paint was delivered, there was 1 can of blue, and the rest was pink.
Originally it had matching his and hers outhouses, but at some point plumbing and bathrooms were added inside. It was used as a school until 1969. In the 70’s, the building was used as a wool mill. The hardwoods in the gym were taken out, the floor raised, and concrete poured for heavy machinery.
In 1987 the building was rented by Ken Nelson, an artist who had been living in Southern Mexico for 20 years, who lived here and ran it as The Old Pink Schoolhouse Gallery for 21 years. Ken expanded both bathrooms to add tubs, and added a full kitchen in each classroom, essentially creating 2 separate living spaces. (Info. from: theurbancampfire.com)
Madison Old Bridge Township Historical Society Thomas Warne Museum
4216 County Route 516
Old Bridge Township, New Jersey
The Cedar Grove School is a historic one-room schoolhouse located at 4216 County Route 516 in Old Bridge Township of Middlesex County, New Jersey. Built in 1885, it was named after the nearby cedar trees and cedar swamp. In 1885, the township changed the building. The original schoolhouse was moved to a nearby farm. The newer schoolhouse closed in 1947 and was turned into a museum in 1964. Since 1964, the building has been the Thomas Warne Museum, run by the Madison–Old Bridge Township Historical Society. The Thomas Warne Museum was founded by the members of the Madison Township Historical Society in April 1964. The museum was named because of its location on a portion of Thomas Warne’s one thousand acres of land. It was sold to the society by the Madison Township Board of Education. Madison Township’s name changed to Old Bridge Township in 1976.
The school-museum was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 24, 1976, for its significance in education and community history. The Thomas Warne Museum contains original desks, slate blackboards, and the pot bellied stove used for heating. The building also has the 1912 film, “The Juggernaut,” filmed locally on a waxed spindle, various pottery jars, hand-turned wrought iron, genealogical data, photos, and a map of antiquity. The museum today is located across from the current Old Bridge High School and is viewed as a metaphor for the great development that took place over the past 300 years.
The North School, also known locally as the Brick School, is a historic one-room schoolhouse at 63 Amesbury Street, located north of the small village center in Kensington, New Hampshire, a town in Rockingham County with a population of 2,095 at the 2020 census. Built in 1842 on the site of a previous school dating to 1798, it was the only brick schoolhouse built in the town, and is one of its four surviving 19th-century schools. Of those, it is the best-preserved. In a rural setting at the northwest corner of Amesbury Street (New Hampshire Route 150) and Moulton Ridge Road, it is a single-story gable-roofed brick building, with a small wood-frame addition to one side. Oriented facing south, its front facade is one of the gable ends, with three window bays to the left of the building entry. Windows are rectangular sash, and are set in openings that lack adornment; the entry door is topped by a four-light transom window, and there is a smaller sash window in the gable.
The building interior includes a small vestibule area and a large classroom space, with outhouse facilities in the otherwise unfinished frame addition. The interior is finished with late 19th and early 20th-century finishes. The school has seen primarily modest alterations since its construction, most notably the addition of windows on its west side in 1918, the installation of the ell for toilet facilities in 1920, and the provisioning of electricity in 1938. It served the town’s educational purposes between 1842 and 1956. The Historical Society of Kensington NH, founded in 1970 to preserve it, is responsible for maintaining the “Old Brick” North School House located in Kensington. It is now used as a local history museum. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.
More than two and a half hours west of Baker, NV, eight children kick up dust on a dirt patch as they play outside a modular building. They dart this way and that, avoiding a handful of bouncing balls. The game here resembles dodgeball. When a handbell rings, the children stop in their tracks. Then they bound up six metal steps and under a sign that reads, “Welcome to Warm Springs School.” It’s a one-room schoolhouse for kindergarten through eighth-grade children in the Nye County School District. Inside the classroom, the teacher, Joseph Burch, meanders the room while reading aloud spelling words: “product,” “journal,” “garbage,” “whiskers.” Two third-graders, who are twin boys, and a second-grade boy jot down the words. Nearby, a 6-year-old girl scans a picture book. And on the other end of the room, the older kids, who are in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade, read a passage about the Trojan War.
Outside, chickens waddle in their coop, two dogs roam the property, horses wander into their pen and a desert tortoise named Tortilla prepares for brumation. This is life at a one-room school located on a cattle ranch, where the students’ lunchtime conversations transition seamlessly from horse roping to a superstar Las Vegas deejay. Anna Fallini and Ty Berg own the ranch that houses the school. But in this isolated, high desert location, neighbors are few and far between, which is why three students spend the night during the school week. Their family’s ranch is about two hours away. And their teacher lives in a cottage on the property, too. But if he joins his students for dinner, he’s still “Mr. Burch” inside the home.
For Burch, who started teaching here in March 2017, Warm Springs School feels like a return to home. He grew up on an Idaho ranch before teaching in several western states, Alaska and Europe. He said there’s an unspoken understanding between him and the five ranching families whose children attend the school. The school is a relatively new addition to the state’s education portfolio. Just four years old, it grew out of Anna Fallini’s desire to provide a more normal education experience for her son Giovanni, n outgoing and energetic kid who makes friends easily. She initially homeschooled him, but over time, it became obvious that wasn’t the best fit for them. He craved social interactions. She craved a more motherly role.
Around the same time, Fallini realized there was a demand for an actual school — much like the one her grandmother and father attended — among the region’s ranching families. Once they secured the modular building, it paved the way for the Nye County School District to green light the school and hire Burch. Now, Giovanni, a fifth-generation rancher, has friends who have become more like siblings. And the one-room school has provided a classroom experience with structure, discipline and social interaction for Giovanni and his peers. Those experiences will come in handy several years down the line when they head off to high school — likely in another town or school district.
walkerhomeschoolblog 