Burrows Hill School (1730)

At the corner of Burrows Hill Road and Schoolhouse Road in Hebron is the Burrows Hill School. Thought to have been erected between 1725 and 1735, it is the oldest of nine former one-room school houses that remain standing in town. After opening, the school remained in operation until a period circa 1834-1860, when the number of children in the Burrows Hill area declined and the school in the Hope Valley area was growing instead. The Burrows Hill School was again flourishing in 1870 but experienced a decline by the early 1900s, closing for good in about 1911. In 1969, the Hebron Historical Society acquired the building and its furnishings from the Town of Hebron and it is now used it as a museum. In 1993, to protect the old school house from oncoming traffic, the structure was moved to a new foundation, forty feet from its original corner location.

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Main House, Rectory School (1795)

Now comprising part of the “Main House” on the campus of the Rectory School in Pomfret is a house erected circa 1795 for Thomas Grosvenor (1744-1825), a lawyer who served in the Revolutionary War. Wounded in his right hand at the Battle of Bunker Hill, Grosvenor ended the was as a Lieutenant Colonel. The house was remodeled and greatly enlarged in about 1885 by Thomas Skelton Harrison, a Philadelphia industrialist. In 1925, Rev. Frank H. Bigelow and his wife, founders of the Rectory School in 1920, acquired the Harrison estate to become the school’s campus. In the ensuing years they erected a complex of wood-framed colonial revival buildings on the estate, which has been the school’s campus ever since.

Postcard of The Rectory School (Main House)

Winchester Center Old Academy (1841)

Winchester Center Old Academy

The building known as the Winchester Center Old Academy is thought to have been built in the eighteenth century, although town accessor’s records give it a construction date (at least in its current form) of 1841 (it certainly has a Greek Revival appearance today appropriate to that period). It was partly built on land provided by Rev. Frederick Marsh, who lived nearby in the Priest Marsh House. It was later acquired by the Winchester Center Ecclesiastical Society and used for winter services, which is why it is also known as the Chapel. The building was renovated in 1910 and in 1971 became the home of the Winchester Center Historical Association.

Boardman School, Mystic Seaport (1765)

Boardman School

The Boardman School at Mystic Seaport is a one room schoolhouse that was originally built in the town of Preston. It may date to as early as 1765 (or c. 1840) and was named for the Boardman family whose land was adjacent to the schoolhouse. When the section of Preston called Glasgo, where the school was located, became the separate town of Griswold in 1815, Boardman School became District Seven School (it was also known as Potter Hill School). It served as a school until 1949, when it was moved to Mystic Seaport.

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Little Red Schoolhouse, Winchester (1815)

Located at the intersection of Platt Hill and Taylor Brook Roads in Winchester is a one-room schoolhouse built in 1815 to replace an earlier one on the same site that had burned down in the 1790s. The new building, Winchester’s District No. 8 schoolhouse, was heated by a fireplace until a box stove was installed in the 1830s. The schoolhouse was in use until it closed in 1908. It then remained abandoned for the next eight years. In 1916, William H. Hall, a historian for whom Hall High School in West Hartford is named, expressed his concern for the neglected building in an article Winsted Evening Citizen. This inspired Clifford Bristol to buy and repair the building. Bristol had been a student at the school about 1870 and his father, Charles A. Bristol, had been a teacher there. In June of 1916, Bristol held a reunion in the school of former teachers and students. In 1923 another meeting was held in the building which formed the Little Red Schoolhouse Association, dedicated to preserving the historic building. The organization’s membership had dwindled by the early 2000s, but in recent years there has been renewed interest and fundraising efforts to allow restoration of the building to its original condition. The restored schoolhouse reopened to the public in 2018. Other Connecticut buildings called “The Little Red Schoolhouse” can be found in North Branford (built 1805) and Wethersfield (built 1869).Bristol held a reunion in the school of former teachers and students. In 1923 another meeting was held in the building which formed the Little Red Schoolhouse Association, dedicated to preserving the historic building. The organization’s membership had dwindled by the early 2000s, but in recent years there has been renewed interest and fundraising efforts to allow restoration of the building to its original condition. The restored schoolhouse reopened to the public in 2018.

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Choate Rosemary Hall: Archbold Building (1928)

The Archbold Building, on the campus of Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, was erected in 1928 and opened in 1929 as the school’s infirmary – the largest school infirmary in the country at the time. Designed by Ralph Adams Cram, the building was a gift of Anne Saunderson Archbold in recognition of the care her son received from Clara St. John, the headmaster’s wife, during a long illness when he was a student. After forty-five years as an infirmary, the building became a girl’s dormitory in the 1970s, when the school became co-ed. In 1998, the Archbold Building was renovated to incorporate the headmaster’s office and admissions offices, with dormitory housing on the upper of its three floors.

Bakerville Library (1873)

According to the website of the Bakerville Library in New Hartford, the building that houses the library was built in 1834. The building was previously used as the Bakerville School. The volume in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series on New Hartford (by Margaret L. Lavoe, 2002) explains that the Bakerville Academy opened in 1873 (replacing an earlier Bakerville schoolhouse on the site) and that research was underway to determine the origin of the building. According to another book published by Arcadia, Connecticut Schoolhouses Through Time (2017), by Melinda K. Elliott, the school was started in 1824 and for a time the upstairs was used by the school and the downstairs was used for meetings and social events. Eventually, both floors would be used as classroom space. Next door was the Bakerville Methodist Church. The church’s horse sheds were attached to the rear of the school building, but they were eventually removed because children would climb out of the second-floor schoolroom onto the shed’s roof. The church burned down in 1954 (a new church was erected in 1960). The school closed when the Bakerville Consolidated School was built in 1941-1942. The Bakerville Library, started in 1949, moved into the former school building in 1951.