Stone School

The second stone-walled school building built on the same site, the Stone School was a model one-room district school building at the time of its construction. It possesses a special interest from an architectural history standpoint because of its substantial stone construction, tile roof, and fine state of preservation. The present Stone School was built in 1911 by local parents who tore down the 1853 stone school building and reused the stones, adding more from nearby farms just as the builders of the first school had done. This part of Pittsfield Township is credited with having built the first school in the county. Called the Mallet's Creek Settlement School, it was a log structure approximately a quarter of a mile to the east on Packard Road. As the area around Packard and Platt Roads grew, eventually there were enough children to warrant forming two school districts. The first part, on the east, became the Carpenter School. District number two, in the Mallet's Creek area, became Stone School. In September 1852, Dr. Benajah Ticknor, a retired naval surgeon, leased a triangle of land at the intersection of Packard and what is now called Stone School roads to the newly formed Pittsfield School District Number 2 as a site for a school. He specified that 'a decent schoolhouse be erected thereon constructed either of stone, brick or frame, and that it be used only as a school house and for such occasional religious meetings as it may be desirable to hold in it.' By the following year, the parents of the district gathered stones from the surrounding farms and erected a small low stone Greek Revival building with front gabled roof and two narrow doors, one for boys and one for girls. When the first history of the county was published in 1881, the district had been divided further so that Stone School was now Fractional District Number 7, serving all of Section 3 and parts of Sections 4, 9, 10, and 16. By 1911 the neighborhood was still growing, so the ever resourceful local parents, many of them graduates of the school, simply pulled down the old building and repeated what had been done a few generations earlier. The article on the centennial celebration emphasizes that no architects or contractors were involved in the 1911 rebuilding. As with the original building, the vernacular style reflects its period. The roof is steeper and of fancy red tile rather than wood shingles. The bell tower adds a special touch of elegance. In the first building, the stones are set in neat rows defined by mortar - a style Dr. Ticknor would have approved as being closer to that of his own cobblestone house just down the road. The later structure instead celebrates the roughness and variety of the stone, contrasting its texture with the smoothness of the tile. Rectangular stones on the corners were laid in alternating directions to give the effect of quoins. The new school attracted the attention of the state Superintendent of Public Instruction Fred L. Keeler, who published a photograph of it in his 1913-14 annual report as a good example of a model 'Standard School.' In 1913 the state Department of Public Instruction began a program of designating as 'Standard Schools' rural schools which met certain state standards, the intention being to promote the improvement of all rural schools in a day before the state imposed much in the way of required standards. Schools which met the standards were awarded a metal 'Standard School' plaque which could be prominently displayed on the building, and a 'diploma certifying to the excellence of the school.' To qualify, the school had to meet requirements under the headings of yard and outbuildings, schoolhouse, furnishings and supplies, organization, and the teacher. Grounds of at least one-half acre, with 'some trees and shrubs tastefully arranged,' were required. The building itself had to be 'well built, in good repair and painted.' Proper attention had to be paid to lighting, with 'no windows which the children or teacher have to face.' Good blackboards, a hardwood floor, and an 'interior clean and tidy' were also required. In the first year of this program, fifty-four schools in the state were designated. The Pittsfield Fractional District No. 7 School was one of them.

Stone School is a one-story field stone wall one-room schoolhouse with a cross-gabled red tile roof. It faces north. The side-gable rectangular classroom forms the main part of the building. It has a broad, square-head window on each narrow side below the gable. A front-gable entrance section extends nine feet out from the main block and features long, narrow double-hung, one-over-one wood framed windows, one on either side of a single painted wood door with a plain fixed transom above. There is a matching long narrow window in each side of the front wing. Wide concrete steps flanked by stepped stone wing walls with concrete caps form a small stoop at the entrance. Larger stones are used as quoins at the corners, to form shallow arches above the windows and door and as a belt course all the way around the building at floor level. Round attic vents are centered in each gable. Above the crossing is the original open square bell tower with its original bell and hipped red tile roof. A plain brick chimney rises from the northeast intersection of the roof slopes. A low, shed-roofed, concrete block bathroom addition was added off the rear in 1955-6.