Work nearly complete on replica of 19th-century Murrysville schoolhouse

A crew of Amish carpenters may have been brought in to build a replica of the 1836 schoolhouse off of West Pike Street in Murrysville, but Murrysville Historical Preservation Society members didn’t need to venture far to find other period-appropriate trappings.

“Lou Geiger from Murrysville, who owns (Caleb Atlantic fuel station at the end of West Pike Street), donated the stove,” said society President Carl Patty as he walked through the building with the lingering smell of teak oil in the air. “We cleaned it and put the stove polish on it.”

And just like in the 19th century, it is extremely effective.

“It was the sole heat source in here when they were finishing the building,” Patty said. “And even with open window frames covered in plastic, it still got to about 80 degrees inside.”

The original school was built around 1836. In 1929, the family who’d purchased the property discovered the school’s original foundation.

The functional schoolhouse bell was cast in 1879 and was donated to the historical society. Franklin Regional School Board member Bill Yant donated blackboards left over from the demolition of another one-room schoolhouse near the intersection of Sardis and Bulltown roads. It was torn down in the 1930s, Patty said.

Behind the blackboards is a small area where students would have hung their coats in the 1800s. On March 12, it was serving as a storage space for some of the remaining tools and building materials, and serves as a convenient way to hide some of the more modern aspects of the building, such as duct work.

And, while it is lit with electricity, much of the building retains the same character as before.

“The wainscoting, the windows, the ceiling, is all as it would have been in the 1830s and ’40s,” Patty said. “It turned out quite well.”

There are still a few things left to be completed, but Patty said the society is hoping to host a grand opening sometime in May.