A guided tour of Andover’s own “little red schoolhouse,” arranged specially for Andover residents and their guests, will be offered at 1 PM on Sunday, June 12, on the schoolhouse site at the end of Tucker Mountain Road in East Andover. The tour, arranged by the Andover Institute and the Andover Historical Society, is open to the public at no cost and will be led by Donna Baker-Hartwell, whose family donated the structure and the land on which it sits to the Historical Society in 2004.
Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and one of 13 one-room schools that once comprised the town of Andover’s school system, the Tucker Mountain Schoolhouse was built in 1837 to serve a small upland farming community. The only schoolhouse in town still remaining in original condition, it served as a schoolhouse until 1894, when a declining student population resulted in its closure.
According the Andover Historical Society’s Web site at AndoverHistory.org, the schoolhouse “consists of a single room, measuring 16 feet by 18 feet. Attached is an ell or shed that serves as a weather-breaking entrance to the school building and also provides storage space for fire wood. A small closet in the shed contains the two-hole privy.
“The building is of post-and-beam construction, using hand-hewn timbers fastened with trunnels, and sets on a foundation of unmortared granite stones. The walls are sheathed with vertical planks, covered externally with clapboards.”
The Web site continues: “The pupils’ heavy plank desks stand bolted to the floor as they were. The floor slopes downward on two sides toward the center of the room, increasing visibility for the pupils in the back rows (a frequently seen design detail in the schools of this time). The interior walls are covered with wide pine boards, painted flat black to serve as chalk boards.”
The schoolhouse visit kicks off the second season of “space explorations” offered by the Andover Institute and designed to introduce local residents and visitors to off-the-beaten-path destinations of historical or geographical interest. To keep abreast of Institute events, “like” its Facebook page at Facebook.com/AndoverInstitute03216.