The One-room Schoolhouse: A Tribute to a Beloved National Icon

This book tracks one room schoolhouses from the 1600s to the present. It is a pictorial of photgraphs by the well known photgrapher, Paul Rocheleau. The photographs are often so detailed that the viewer feels a part of the scene. Rocheleau had also interviewed past and present students and teachers that have or are now experiencing the culture of a one room schoolhouse.

Nowadays, so many school buildings resemble factories; at one time, the schoolhouse was a more personal place. What author and photographer Paul Rocheleau has given us is a beautiful book on an iconic piece of Americana, the one-room schoolhouse. Mr. Rocheleau traveled across the U.S. to capture a representative sample of surviving examples of the one-room schoolhouse. The result is collection of beautiful photographs depicting some 240 surviving schoolhouses dating from pre-Revolutionary times to the 1940s. Though many of these buildings are now museum pieces, others still serve the function for which they were built, while others have been converted into private dwellings and community centers. Mr. Rocheleau surveys the birth of the one-room schoolhouse (from the founding of Jamestown to 1775), its evolution from the founding of the Nation to 1890, and its "Golden Age," from 1890 to the beginning of World War II. He also covers efforts to restore and preserve these historic structures, one-room schoolhouses with special histories, and examples still in use today. I particularly enjoyed the examples of octagonal schoolhouses among the book's 208 pages. Included is a bibliography and a thoughtful introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, whose essays are appreciated by readers of the New York Times. The book was published in 2003 and, alas, out of print. This book deserves to be appreciated by more people who want to learn more about a form of architecture that beautifully reflects local culture.

The author has traveled the country photographing buildings, and the result is a book filled with beautifully clear, colorful pictures of schoolhouses, many of them architectural gems. The book traces the earliest American schoolhouses from their beginnings in the 1600's up through the 1940's. Every style is represented from simple log buildings through elaborate stone, brick, clapboard, and shingle sided relics. There must be 100 or more buildings from 48 states featured in the included photos. Rocheleau has photographed interiors as well as exteriors and included histories and anecdotes related to many of the buildings. Some of the schools are in places that you would expect, featuring a classic schoolhouse design such as the Kibler Schoolhouse in Towamensing, Pennsylvania. Others are very unusual, such as an old Japanese schoolhouse in Hawaii. I've thought the one-room schoolhouse was a fascinating subject ever since I spent summers in Tennessee with my grandparents as a child and discovered that their next door neighbors were living in a converted one-room schoolhouse. I am surprised this book went out of print so fast. At least you can still find it used.

A fun read and great photographs for someone interested in this disappearing landmark.