Back in 2022, I found what I thought might be Hamilton County’s old Bakers Corner schoolhouse. I was never fully convinced, though, and even wrote a post about my lingering doubts. The problem was that the post wasn’t very good and the photo I grabbed of the building was downright awful, so I kept kicking it down the road. Then, yesterday morning, I finally uncovered proof that the building really was the schoolhouse! As luck would have it, I happened to drive past it later that same day.
The crossroads community of Bakers Corner sits at East 236th Street and Dunbar Road, just west of US-31 in rural Hamilton County. Founded by Quakers in the 1830s, the hamlet once featured a sorghum plant, a general store, a Wesleyan Church, and a schoolhouse1. Little remains aside from the church today. Still, four or five generations of students studied at various iterations of the school at Bakers Corner.
The first schoolhouse was a log structure near where the community’s general store once stood. The second was a frame building a half mile west that served Adams Township’s District 72. Another frame building was eventually erected at the southwestern corner of 236th Street and Dunbar Road before a brick replacement was completed on the site3. The school offered at least some high school coursework for students by 19154, but closed in 1933 to consolidate into buildings in Boxley and Sheridan5. The Bakers Corner schoolhouse was auctioned two years later6, and Craig Stapleton was the highest bidder7.
That’s about all I knew when I first pulled up to Bakers Corner for a photo, but I wasn’t completely convinced I’d found the place. For one thing, Google Street View showed a long brick building with a gable roof sitting southeast of the intersection rather than directly on the crossroads like a 1906 plat map of Hamilton County seemed to suggest8. The second issue was size. The structure looked enormous for a one-room schoolhouse, measuring roughly 1,700 square feet. Most surviving Hamilton County schools are considerably smaller. Fairview, for instance, comes in around 1,100 square feet, while many others hover closer to 1,300. Then were those additions! Something about the whole thing just didn’t quite add up.
At any rate, I took my crappy photo, pondered, and procrastinated. The post kept getting bumped down the schedule while I went back and forth over whether I’d actually identified the building correctly. Yesterday, though, I finally decided enough was enough: even if I was suspicious about the structure’s identity, I could at least turn the post into a story about my confusion! Since I was already planning to be in the area that afternoon, I figured I might as well swing back by Bakers Corner and grab some better photos.
Money’s tight these days, especially for gas, so I hopped on SHAARD -the State Historic Architectural and Archaeological Research Database- to look for places in the area that might be interesting for future posts. There, I stumbled across a listing for “Adams Township District Number 7 School,” at the southeast corner of Dunbar Road and State Road 47- now East 236th Street9. A 9-watt LED bulb producing 800 lumens of epiphany instantly lit over my head. There it was!
The SHAARD entry cleared up several of the things that had been nagging at me for years, or at least exposed my own ineptitude. The question of why the building sat near the intersection instead of directly on the corner remained unresolved, but the mystery of its size suddenly made perfect sense: Bakers Corner hadn’t been a one-room schoolhouse at all. Built in 1889, the school contained two large classrooms separated by a double hall and served students in grades one through eight10. In hindsight, that oversized footprint I’d been suspicious of was actually one of the biggest clues that I’d found the right building all along.
It was truly satisfying to put the Bakers Corner mystery to bed and add another surviving Hamilton County schoolhouse to the roster. There’s something rewarding about watching a building shift from “maybe” to “definitely,” especially after years of second-guessing yourself over maps, footprints, and badly-taken photos! More than anything, though, this detour reminded me just how many stories are still hiding in Hamilton County’s back roads. Every old schoolhouse seems to lead to another rabbit hole. Fortunately for me, there are still plenty more left to dive down into.
Sources Cited
1 Bakers Corner (1984, August 8). The Noblesville Ledger. p. 3.
2 Warner, C.S. (1866). Map of Hamilton County, Indiana. C.A.O. McClellan & C.S. Warner [Waterloo City]. Map.
3 School House Sold At Auction (1935, August 28). The Noblesville Ledger. p. 1. \
4 Haines, J.F. (1915). History of Hamilton County Indiana. B.F. Bowen & Company [Indianapolis]. book.
5 (See footnote 3).
6 Notice of Sale School House And Ground By Trustee (1935, August 16). The Sheridan News. p. 3.
7 (See footnote 3).
8 Cottingham, C.J. (1906). Map of Hamilton County Indiana, compiled from original surveys and personal inspection. The Hamilton Trust Company [Noblesville]. Map.
9 Survey Number 057-587-19002 (1981). IHSSI (County Survey). SHAARD. Indiana Department of Natural Resources [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved May 27, 2026.
10 (See footnote 9).
Very cool, I’ve never heard of a two-room schoolhouse!
I’ve only seen a few and read about a few more no longer standing. Pretty uncommon!
The current structure brings terms like “hodgepodge” and “higgledy piggledy” to mind. Any idea if it was some sort of business after its schoolhouse days passed? I suppose if it has water and septic/sewer it could possibly serve as a residence.
I agree, it’s been expanded quite uglily. There was some evidence that it may have been a gas station at one time, but now it looks like it’s being used for storage per the assessor.