I’ve always been fascinated by buildings that find new life as churches, especially when their original purpose seems as removed from worship as possible. Over the years, I’ve written about a former Marsh supermarket, another old Marsh, a pair of Walmarts, and even an old car dealership that traded its showroom for a sanctuary! Schools seem like natural candidates for congregations looking for a new home, and one in Delaware County -Perry Elementary- successfully made that transition. Along the way, a prominent Muncie newspaperman managed to make a spectacularly cringy observation.
For much of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, Indiana’s townships operated their own school systems. Perry Township, remotely situated in the southeastern corner of Delaware County, eventually boasted twelve district schoolhouses of its own1. The consolidated school that replaced them -Center- is long gone, but the final chapter of Perry Township’s educational history played out across the township line in neighboring Liberty. Just across the border, Perry Elementary opened in 1967.
Perry Township was home to Delaware County’s first schoolhouse, built in 1827 on Aaron Richardson’s land east of New Burlington2. A boulder commemorates the school today, although the original building stood half a mile west, in what was then described as a “trackless [sic] forest3.” The schoolhouse was a humble structure, measuring just twenty feet square and constructed of round logs with chinking packed between them4. According to local tradition, the logs were hewn by “Indian Jim” Musco, believed to have been the last member of the Delaware tribe still living in the area5.
In addition to being home to Delaware County’s first schoolhouse, Perry Township was also the first where officials closed rural schools for good. That process eventually led to the construction of Center School at the southeast corner of County Roads 600-South and 600-East. Always a small school, Center’s largest graduating class numbered just thirty students in 19377. By the fifties, though, the days of small, independent township schools were numbered: in 1959, Indiana’s State Commission for the Reorganization of School Corporations called for Perry Township’s schools to merge with those of neighboring Liberty Township, home to Selma High School. The consolidation finally took place in 1964.
Center High School was demolished after the merger8, leaving only its vocational and agricultural building behind under private ownership. The newly formed Liberty-Perry continuum still needed a place to educate Perry Township’s younger children, though, so the solution was to build an entirely new school on the site of Liberty Township’s old District 11: Knoxville schoolhouse9. Perry Elementary opened in 1967.
The new building featured twelve elementary classrooms, a dedicated space for kindergarten, a special education center, a nurse’s office, and administrative space for the principal, receptionist, and guidance counselor. A library, gymnasium, and cafeteria were also provided, apparently sharing space in an enormous multipurpose room10. The building was a far cry from a twenty-foot-square cabin in the woods! In fact, the contrast between Perry Township’s first and latest schools was so dramatic that Dick Greene, the longtime Muncie newspaperman and most prominent historian, couldn’t resist drawing a comparison.
Unfortunately, Greene’s attempt to bridge 140 years of educational progress through a little historical imagination produced something that reads pretty terribly today. Reflecting on what Jim Musco might have thought of the new school, Greene wrote, “If Indian Jim were to rise from his grave in Rees Cemetery and visit the new Perry Elementary School he would not believe his eyes…If this Delaware Indian were to react as the Indian stereotype does in stories and movies he might say ‘Ugh!’ The chances are that he, having been exposed to the English language for so many years, would utter something more expressive, though brief, like ‘fine building’ or ‘not like one I help build11.'”
Greene may have stumbled by quoting a trite generalization and then contributing to the stereotype himself, but his underlying point was perfectly sound: the modern Perry Elementary School would have been almost unimaginable to someone who helped build the township’s first log schoolhouse! A charitable read is important, but his choice of words has me wondering what I’ve written that might look just as cringy sixty years from now. We’re all products of our time, after all, and there’s no telling how future generations will judge the things we say so innocently today.
At any rate, Perry Township progressed from a single room in a forest to a modern school equipped with facilities its earliest residents could scarcely have imagined. Still, though, Perry Elementary’s own tenure was relatively brief: the school -by then home only to students in kindergarten and first grade- closed in 2010. Officials said it would save the Liberty-Perry district $200,000 each year12.
Fortunately, the building didn’t meet the same fate as Center School. Perry Elementary found a new purpose as the home of Bible Baptist Church, which continues a tradition of community use that stretches all the way back to that first log schoolhouse. The building was inaccessible when I drove past in July with gates shut tight. When I passed last Saturday, one stood wide open! I drove in and took the photographs I’ve shared here.
I doubt anyone who attended Perry Elementary in 1967 could have predicted that their brand-new school would someday become a church, just as the children who attended Perry Township’s first schoolhouse in 1827 could hardly have imagined the institution that would eventually replace it. That’s part of what makes these old buildings so fascinating to me. Perry Township’s original schoolhouse has been gone for generations, and Center School followed it into oblivion. At least Perry Elementary survives, even if it takes a trip across the township line to find it.
Sources Cited1 Helm, T. B. (1881). Mount Pleasant Township. In History of Delaware County, Indiana: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. book, Kingman Brothers.
2 Kemper, G. W. H. (1908). Education in Delaware County. In A Twentieth Century History of Delaware County, Indiana, Volume 1. book, Lewis Publishing Company.
3 Daughters of the American Revolution, Paul Revere Chapter (1927). The First School House in Delaware County. Muncie, Indiana.
4 Greicus, A. (1948, April 14). County’s First Schoolhouse Built in 1827. The Muncie Star. p. D1.
5 Hillman, R. (1993, June 23). Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
6 (See footnote 2).
7 Spath, C. (2006, February 4). Past times. The Muncie Star Press. p. 3C.
8 Farrell, J. (1967, July 25). Center School, County Landmark, to Be Razed. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1.
9 Helm, T. B. (1881). Mount Pleasant Township. In History of Delaware County, Indiana: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. book, Kingman Brothers.
10 Cronin, D. (1967, February 12). Perry Elementary Enrolls First Class. The Muncie Star. p. 25.
11 Greene, D. (1967, November 29). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
12 Closing a school sends message loud and clear (2010, April 15). The Muncie Star Press. p. 7.
