My Uncle Jeff texted me the other day with a question: did I know about the old schoolhouse for sale nearby? I knew about the school, but not that it had hit the market. The 1886 Lincoln schoolhouse near Yorktown has grown to 3,951 square feet! After forty-six years in the same family, it could be yours for $325,000.
The Lincoln schoolhouse served students in Mt. Pleasant Township’s District 3. Although there were older schoolhouses nearby, Lincoln’s history dates to 1866, when Benjamin Snodgrass granted the township trustee half an acre to establish it1. The original school was probably frame, but was replaced by the present structure after twenty years. The building closed in 1924 as the township’s last one-room schoolhouse to shutter.
Six years later, Athel Watson converted the building into a home2. Since then, two sympathetic additions in 1999 and 2008 have expanded the old schoolhouse into its present, four-bedroom, three-bathroom floorplan. My, would this be a tempting purchase! If I can scrape together 108,000 Ko-fi donations and deaccession some semiquincentennial quarters, I might wind up enough to make an offer.
Sources Cited
1 Delaware County, Indiana. (1866, June 15). Deed Book 31. p. 343.
2 Winters, R. (1982, September 5). A Little Brick Schoolhouse Becomes a Home. The Muncie Star, p. B1.
Some choices sure were made in redecorating that house… but at least a few original brick walls have been left showing on the interior.
I thought about going and seeing it yesterday but those choices were not my favorites either. It was cool seeing the north wall from inside the addition in the photos, though.