(Re)constructing the little red schoolhouse: History, landscape and memory

This work attempts to lay out a full, ethnographic history of one-room schoolhouses in Morgan County, Indiana, from their conception and birth; growth and maturity; aging, decline and death; to their rebirth through adaptive reuse. It examines the history of one-room schoolhouse architecture, how that history is played out in actual forms on the landscape in a specific locale, and how collective memory influences preservation---especially how nostalgia for the schoolhouse, a powerful national icon, shapes how we as Americans interpret our national past, how we interpret the schoolhouse as historic and traditional structure, and how we construct and reconstruct new meanings for it. Methodology includes but is not limited to archival research; oral interviews; and building and site analysis.;The one-room schoolhouse as a codified form originated in prescriptive literature beginning about 1830. Vernacular forms evolved on the Morgan County landscape, from log to frame to brick. As quickly as local schoolhouses were discontinued, their physical forms were reconstructed for new uses; likewise, the idea of the schoolhouse evolved to accommodate new demands. Today's owners/occupants regard their buildings as artifacts of a lost and better era and struggle to preserve authenticity---or their perceptions of it---while adapting to the often opposing vernacular and professional demands of history; tradition; space; construction and maintenance; aesthetics; symbolic meaning, and so on.