Old Schools

I love to look at old schools, whether one room or several rooms.... they are vestiges of a slower time in our countryside.  We are blessed to have a variety around us here at Calamity Acres.  I have shown you a few, but there are more that I am going out to try to take pictures of. 

When I was a child, my grandmother, and her son and daughter, my aunt and uncle who never married, lived on a dairy farm in the next county over.  On their road (wonderfully named "Moonlight Road") stood Moonlight School.  It was one room... and when I was about 13, it was moved over to the other side of the road, and turned into a house, where it still stands.  In it's place was built a "modern" two room school, and I wanted to go to school there more than anything.  When my own sons were 11 and 13, my mother and I took a contract on a school that had been converted into a home, on an acre here in Leavenworth County.  It was 1983 though, and we could not sell our big house in town.  Finally, we released the sellers from the contingency contract and they were able to sell the schoolhouse.  Six months later when I drove out to see it... it was GONE.  It had been moved from the place it had stood since the 1890s.  It had had a barn and another outbuilding, and I pictured myself raising my children in it's peaceful setting. 

Here then, is a house I featured once before... the White School in Lawrence, Kansas.  It is for sale now, sitting in a commercial area that once must have been a neighborhood in North Lawrence.  It has been a commercial building for many years. 

This is the back.  We think it probably had three levels, based on the window coverings you can just barely make out to the left.... in the side wall... and the door in the back under the covered roof that appears to go into a basement.  There were clearly two floors upstairs.

It is on an acre and a half, so I suspected that there was some type of barn structure for horses near. 

And this is a school from down our road, which I also featured here.  It was built in the 1880s, and then was used as a church for a while.  It suffered a fire, and the "modern" parts of the building were stripped away to leave the limestone.  About two years ago, a young carpenter bought it and remodeled the interior extensively. It is now brought up to our century on the inside, but maintains it's charm on the outside.  It sold again this year, and we do not know who owns it now, they are not living there yet.... and it's windows are dark again at night.

It reminds me of the picture below.  I love old pictures... I love to look at the faces and homes and pets of those who came before us, whose footsteps haunt our land and who left their imprints here for those of us who followed.

(as always, click on the picture to bring their faces closer to you)