‘Step back in time’ by viewing display on one-room schoolhouses
— Photo from the Guilderland Historical Society
Marguerite Witherwax, the last teacher at the Cobblestone Schoolhouse in Guilderland Center, which closed in 1941, poses with her students in the 1930s.
GUILDERLAND — Before the schools were centralized, Guilderland had 14 districts with a schoolhouse for each of the hamlets in town.
The Guilderland Historical Society currently has an exhibit, “Guilderland’s One-Room Schoolhouses,” on display of photos and artifacts at the Guilderland Public Library.
“From photos of the buildings to lunch ‘pails’ and a genuine school bell to school books, you can step back in time and consider how students were once educated in New York State,” said Carol Hamblin, secretary of the society, in an announcement about the exhibit.
“One of the schools, the Cobblestone Schoolhouse of District #6 on Route 146 in Guilderland Center, is on the National Register of Historic Places,” Hamblin said, “and still garners admiring glances for its cobblestone construction, completed by the talented 24-year-old Robert L. Zeh in 1860.”
The town now owns the Cobblestone Schoolhouse, having received overwhelming voter support for the transfer of ownership from the school district.
“There’s a surprise announcement about the schoolhouse included in the display,” said Hamblin.
She went on, “Photos show that the pot-bellied coal stove and blackboards were ubiquitous, but the one-room schoolhouse was a valued part of the community, yet one more way in which communities were held together.”
The Guilderland Public Library is located at 2228 Western Ave.
Hamblin concluded by urging, “Be sure to take a look at the way it used to be in Guilderland and much of the United States in an earlier, less complicated era, when our rural roots determined who we were as a country.”
