Read time: 11 min.

Williamsburg, Indiana, is an unincorporated community platted in 1830. Situated around US-35 and the old Centerville Road, it’s about twelve miles northwest of the heart of downtown Richmond. I’ve passed the old Green Township school there countless times, but never got a chance to explore it until just recently. What a treasure! I’m glad I did. 

Williamsburg’s schoolhouse -officially, the Green Township School- was built in 1923 to replace a decrepit structure that, despite several attempts at renovation over the years¹– had been condemned in 1921². Although the township had once been home to at least seven rural schoolhouses³, the new building absorbed all of them- a feat that, apparently, its crowded, elderly predecessor was ill equipped to handle⁴. 

The two-story Williamsburg School cost $57,109 and stood atop a raised basement that housed rooms for cooking, sewing, agriculture, and manual training. Four grade-school classrooms lined the west side of the main floor above. All connected by a long hallway, a library occupied the north end while offices sat to the south. To the east was a tiny gymnasium/auditorium. Students entering from the main floor found themselves at the top of its concrete bleachers⁵. 

The second floor of the school featured a large assembly room, three classrooms used for junior- and senior-high students, and a lab. During the alumni organization’s recent open house, only the gym and first full floor were open for exploration. Still, what we saw was remarkable. 

Mom and I entered through a south-side door that opened into a foyer once home to the gym’s ticket booth⁶. It was impressive! Regal displays showcased trophies, jerseys, and memorabilia spanning the history of the Williamsburg Yellow Jackets, but one team received special attention: the 1954–55 squad, which stormed through the regular season with a perfect 21–0 record before its remarkable run ended in a 58–40 sectional drubbing by Richmond⁷.

As exceptional as the trophies were, they were overshadowed by something far stranger. Opposite the display cases was a bizarre nine-foot horn that looked as though it’d been salvaged from the deck of an ocean liner after Dr. Seuss had gotten ahold of it. In reality, it was an enormous custom radio speaker built by Williamsburg resident Clifford Duke in the 1920s. Mounted on a concrete pad beside his home, the giant gooseneck horn broadcast radio programs to listeners as far as three miles away, sometimes to some chagrin⁸. I’m glad the community center’s caretakers have chosen to preserve it.

From the trophy room, Mom and I stepped into the gymnasium. With a classic arrangement straight from the peak of Hoosier hysteria, the place was a stunner. Almost immediately, though, I noticed something odd: the wall that stretched from the stage to a pilaster near the first window was brick, but everything beyond it was block. The transition seemed too abrupt to be accidental, and I began to suspect the gym had been expanded at some point. Fortunately, a look at one of the excellent displays assembled by the alumni association confirmed my theory. 

The original Williamsburg gym was tiny. Its north-south playing floor measured just 30 by 60 feet, even smaller than the already undersized gym in nearby Economy⁹.  In 1952, the school dramatically expanded its athletic facilities. The new east-west court measured 48 by 84 feet and included a stage that incorporated the original gym’s surviving bleachers. The renovation increased seating capacity from just 250 spectators to 1,500 and added two classrooms¹⁰. Today, some of the original concrete bleachers are still visible behind the stage- as is the door that led to them. 

Mom and I wandered through the old gym for a while before someone suggested we check out the floor above, where there was memorabilia to be seen. To get there, we climbed a broad stairway set into the southern corner of the school. The staircase rose in two flights around a landing, hemmed in by warm, bricks and railings that looked like they’d changed little over the years.

The first room we entered once served as the school’s administrative offices. Today, it functions as a local history museum. Along with an antique stretcher, one exhibit documented the curious story of Clifford Duke’s famous horn. I got the feeling that all the vintage school furniture -a desk, some chairs, and a podium- may have witnessed generations of Williamsburg students and teachers.

We rounded the corner into the office proper and found ourselves surrounded by even more pieces of Williamsburg’s past. Uniforms sat wrapped on a table, team photographs lined the walls, and ribbons, banners, and flags testified to decades of Yellow Jacket achievements. As fascinating as the memorabilia was, my favorite feature of the room wasn’t in a display case. It was the fireplace! Somehow, the idea of a principal conducting school business beside a crackling fire felt fantastically old-fashioned.

I’ve always associated wainscoted brick hallways with old schools. Unfortunately, I missed that era entirely. Every school I attended featured drywall, cinder block, and institutional beige instead. As a result, walking through a corridor lined with brick always connects me to the kind of school building I imagine from old yearbooks and mid-century photographs. Fortunately, Williamsburg’s first-floor hallway appeared remarkably unchanged from its days as an active school. The walls were lined with class photographs from the 1950s and 1960s in an intriguing visual timeline of the school’s past. Everyone looked so old!

The first classrooms we poked our heads into featured even more artifacts. Every available surface in this one seemed covered with them! The far wall was especially striking: hanging above the old blackboard were beautifully preserved athletic jackets, letter sweaters, and uniforms that traced decades of Williamsburg Yellow Jacket history. Beneath them, the chalkboard was covered with signatures and messages from former students and visitors.

What I loved most about the next space we found was that it still felt unmistakably like a classroom. Flooded by natural light, the original hardwood floors were worn from decades of use. What I presume to be the original chalkboard was still in place, as was the great old built-in storage. Modern classrooms tend to rely on metal cabinets and plastic bins, but these were part of the building itself and designed to last.

One more classroom had been left unlocked for visitors, and it was my favorite. Unlike the museum rooms filled with relics and trophies, this space was almost completely empty. There wasn’t much to see beyond bare walls and a hardwood floor at first glance, but that emptiness was exactly what made it so compelling. Without displays and modern distractions, the room felt closer to what Williamsburg students would have experienced during the building’s years as a school. The most striking feature was a row of four enormous windows stretching nearly from waist height to the ceiling. 

Other rooms on the building’s first floor, including the old library, were locked and off-limits to visitors. That was a little disappointing, but one feature I could still admire was the school’s original front entrance. Peering through a window, I snapped a photo down the entry vestibule and found myself wondering why the doors were no longer in use. The answer is probably mundane: these days, most visitors enter through the gym, which serves as the building’s primary gathering space and offers easier accessibility. From a practical standpoint, that makes perfect sense. Still, it felt a little sad to think of this entrance sitting unused. 

I also grabbed a photo through the doors to the stage and its wide concrete steps. I love details like that because they’re easy to miss! Most visitors would see a set of concrete risers and think nothing of them, but those steps are survivors. I couldn’t help but imagine the profound transformation: before 1952, students and fans would have crowded onto them, bleachers then, to watch the Yellow Jackets play in a gym scarcely larger than a modern elementary school court. Few parts of the building better illustrate how Williamsburg adapted and grew while still carrying pieces of its past forward.

I was hoping to see the assembly hall and high school classrooms, so I headed upstairs to the building’s second story only to find the doors locked. While the gym and museum area contained plenty of history, there’s something about old classrooms that fascinates me even more. I would have loved the chance to see whether Williamsburg’s upstairs rooms retained any of those features. That said, I couldn’t blame the caretakers for keeping the area closed. The basement was locked as well.

Before we left, I stopped to take one final photograph of the gym, which seemed only fitting. After all, the floor had been the heart of Williamsburg school life for decades. The gym remained Williamsburg’s home court until 1962, when the neighboring Webster High School’s Pirates consolidated¹¹ to form Webster-Williamsburg¹². The old building continued to play a role in local education, but the era of Williamsburg as an independent high school had come to an end.

In 1967, yet another round of consolidation sent students to the newly formed Northeastern Wayne High School¹³. The district continued to use the old Green Township School as an elementary, but it was shuttered for good in 1983¹⁴. Unlike many other rural schools lost to the wrecking ball, though, Williamsburg was fortunate: the year it closed, Greene Township acquired the property and gave the building its present purpose as a community center¹⁵.

The old school has been lovingly preserved ever since, and that’s what makes Williamsburg so special. The building wasn’t merely saved. Instead, it was cherished. Decades after the last school bell rang, the gym still hosts events, the hallways still echo with activity, and room after room preserves the stories of the students, teachers, and athletes who passed through its doors.

In an era when so many historic schools have vanished, Williamsburg’s old high school remains exactly what it has always been: a gathering place for the community. Formal education within its walls may have ended, but the building’s purpose never really did. There’s a final lesson we can learn from that.

Sources Cited
1 Williamsburg School Is Being Improved (1906, October 25). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 4.
2 Expect To Remedy Troubles In Schools Of Green Township (1921, September 13). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 1. 
3 The county of Wayne, Indiana, an imperial atlas and art folio (1893). Rerick Brothers [Richmond]. Map. 
4 New Green Township School Will Provide Excellent Quarters (1923, March 24). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 7. 
5 (See footnote 4). 
6  Yoder, B. (2025) Williamsburg (925) Built 1953. Hoosier Gym Journey. Web. Retrieved June 7, 2026. 
7 Neddenriep, K. (2010). Historic Hoosier Gyms: discovering bygone basketball landmarks. The History Press [Charleston]. Book. 
8 Reynolds, D. (1983, February 3). Huge speaker gets lift to museum. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 43. 
9 Williamsburg School Expansion Contracts To Be Let April 5 (1952, March 18). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 1. 
10 (See footnote 9).
11 Webster High School Pupils Transferred To Williamsburg (1962, July 3). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 2. 
12 Richmond, Webster-Williamsburg Win In First-Round Sectional Action Here (1966, February 25). The Richmond Palladium-item. p. 12. 
13 (See footnote 7).
14 Effort to save school pays off (1983, November 21). The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 5. 
15 Klein Tidrow, B. (1983, November 19). Township gets Williamsburg school. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 3.