An Old Schoolhouse

A brick one-room schoolhouse converted into a modest home.

Before the public education systems we all know and love today, schooling was conducted by a learned person hired to stand around in a brick-and-mortar room with a bunch of bored children who had to walk uphill both ways. While that system might not have lasted into the modern age, thanks to their simple and robust construction, many of those one-room schoolhouses built throughout the 19th and early 20th century still stand. Some have simply been abandoned, of course, but most have been converted as later owners saw fit. Barns, garages, museums, and even homesteads.

This little one counts itself among the lattermost. Sometime soon after the Second World War, the local school district was established and those schoolhouses it consolidated went on the market. Whoever scooped up this brick darling respected its schoolhouse charm while renovating the interior in preparation for a life lived domestic. And, while it isn't unscathed by decades of habitation, the residents have always taken great care of this humble house of learning which once sheltered children from the wet and cold.

One (cozy) bedroom, one (cramped) bath. Given it began as a single-room brick-and-timber construction and has been further partitioned, this is not a spacious house. But it is a charming, historic one, and it's waiting for somebody to, surely, plaster its interior in references to its previous life as a school. No mods or silly build mode tricks went into this build, just an appreciation for the real structures which inspired it.

At just under $12,000, this schoolhouse is a frugal para's dream. A couple could easily spend their youth or their twilight here, but a single teacher or professor might find it even more fitting. Just don't paint the bricks or cover the hardwood, for Paragod's sake!