NORTH COLLINS
Old one-room school still a place to learn
When Dave Willett is at Schoolhouse No. 8 in North Collins, he’s usually busy working.
But every once in a while, when he walks into the simple white building now being restored, he is alone, and it’s quiet.
“There have been times when it sort of took my breath away,” he said. “It’s stepping so back in time.”
The building, a one-room schoolhouse, was used from around 1857 until 1951. Willett, one of the leaders in the schoolhouse’s restoration, was one of five children in his family to attend first through eighth grades there.
Now, Schoolhouse No. 8 provides a living history for visiting schoolchildren.
At the front of the building’s single room are recitation benches, where the teacher would instruct a small group of children before sending them back to their desks to do their work while she taught another grade level or subject.
The students’ desks have holes for ink wells. A stove sits in the middle of the room.
And there is an outhouse — a three-holer. The Sears & Roebuck catalog inside is a replica.
The room also includes a display case full of one-room schoolhouse memorabilia.
“You get so many questions, like ‘Who was the principal?’ and ‘Did they really hit you when you were bad?’ ” said Allene Smith, who coordinates tours for the schoolhouse.
“They get totally involved. They love to sit in the desks,” said Jean Avery, another volunteer. “If we don’t have enough seats and bring extra chairs, they’ll crowd together because they want to sit in the school seats.”
The schoolhouse reopened to visitors in 2005, but it’s restoration has been in development for more than a decade.
Rich Taczkowski, then a North Collins councilman, started efforts to save the building in the late 1990s. Then, it was on its original site, Ketchum Road.
Smith, who lives about a mile from the original site, said she and her husband were amazed that anybody thought it could be saved.
“My husband went over and said, ‘What are you guys doing? This place is a wreck,’ ” Smith said.
But the roof was tarped, and Taczkowski was able to get a $20,000 historic preservation grant for work on the building.
Eventually, the schoolhouse was moved off the original site and placed on town property near the North Collins Library.
Restorers have attempted to bring the building back to how it would have looked in about 1900. Anything that could be saved from the original building was kept, and they filled the school with desks, books and other materials from earlier times.
Organizers raised about $50,000 in grants and donations for the project, and they are seeking to raise another $50,000 to create an endowment to help sustain the project. They also are seeking a museum charter from New York State.
“The thing that’s the most amazing part of that project is how the community came together to make it happen,” Willett said. “When we first started, we had nothing but a tired, old building.
The schoolhouse is open from 1 to 4 p. m. Sundays from May to October. Since there is no heat inside the school — unless the stove is fired up — the building is emptied in the fall and the materials placed in storage.
Tours, which can be scheduled for other times, as well, are free. The organization is run entirely by volunteers.
For information, call 337-3341.
