If you were coming through Otis on September 2nd, you might have been lucky enough to see the curious sight of the old Schoolhouse lifted high up above the ground. Under the guidance of Clark + Green Architects of Great Barrington, Mass., the East Otis Schoolhouse is being brought back from decades of neglect. Funded by a grant from the Massachusetts Historical Commission, the Town of Otis through the Otis Historical Commission, and the Otis Preservation Trust, the project will be realized in two phases. First the building’s footings and structure are strengthened, which then will be followed by a restoration of its interior.
There are still some people living among us today who attended this school and may recall going out to the freezing privies in the winters when a wood stove heated the single classroom. The East Otis Schoolhouse is unique, because of its continued use until the middle of the 20th century, contemporaneous with the dawn of the Cold War and the Space Age. Many of today’s grandparents in rural New England attended school in one of the one-room schoolhouses scattered throughout the hills.
The structure in Otis is a model of the one-room schoolhouse widely used in pre-mid-20th-century New England. It was constructed around 1850, during Zachary Taylor’s presidency – and only closed its doors in 1949, during the Harry Truman era at the dawn of the Space Age when the first monkey was rocketed into space.
The Otis Schoolhouse underwent a renovation decades after its construction. On the interior a metal ceiling and other metal panels were added. The renovation also included an addition, including a wood storage area, a boy’s privy accessible from the outside, and a girl’s privy accessible from inside the school. There was no running water. The building was heated by a wood stove at the center of the room, with the flue pipe crossing the space to give off heat. Originally there was only a pipe going out of the roof through a thimble. A concrete block chimney was added later.
A new school building was erected in the 1940s and the one-room Schoolhouse was closed. In the following years, the Old Schoolhouse was occasionally used for vacation Bible school by the since-demolished adjacent church but as that use lapsed, it fell into disrepair. In 2004 a group of former students made a strong volunteer effort to save and restore the Schoolhouse, succeeding in its stabilization and survival for another 15 years.
Clark +Green’s intent is to restore the Schoolhouse to the Truman era, highlighting its unique late operation far into the twentieth century. Taking the building back to the most recent period of use is a novel approach to restoration. In the interior, many finishes and built-ins from the Truman era survive to this day and contribute to the eclectic interior. Some of our design suggestions for the interior are conjectural, such as adding missing pin-up boards, which have completely disappeared because of their soft and natural materials. Roofing tiles will be manufactured by a Salt Lake City company, which is able to produce an exact replica of roofing shingles and interior ceiling and wall panels. These details and materials will complete the building and will enable visitors to experience the Schoolhouse as its students did 80 years ago.
In the first phase, which is now being concluded, the contractor, Larochelle Construction of South Hadley, Mass., separated the later privy addition from the original main school building. The entire main building was then lifted off the old stone rubble foundations using a crane. New concrete piers faced with fieldstone were erected, which in construction and appearance are similar to the original foundations. The floor was reinforced as well.
As an initial phase to stabilize the building, this project paves the way for complete rehabilitation of the little Schoolhouse to serve as an historical and educational resource, and to add significantly to the sense of place of East Otis for generations to come.
