Michigan Schoolhouses

    
The Thorington Schoolhouse, in use 1859-1955, on Mound Road in Washington Township, Michigan

Thorington Schoolhouse

I've driven around Michigan (well, mainly Lower Michigan thus far) during 2012-2021 to photograph old one-room and two-room schoolhouses. My primary reason for doing this was to expose these schoolhouses to you, in the hope they'll be preserved if enough people see them and want them to be saved. If not, then at least my photographs might become a historical record for those that disappear silently, one by one (as Frog Mountain and Dryer have done just recently). I'd fantasized publishing a successor to Mary Keithan's superb "Michigan One-Room Schoolhouses" coffee table book, but I've decided it would be silly for me to pursue something that complex instead of the much simpler publication of this "Michigan Schoolhouses" web site. So here it is... photos from places destined to either crumble into the oblivion of history or, more hopefully, to be restored for historical education or modern re-use, along with whatever meager information about them I've been able to gather and communicate. I hope you enjoy perusing the site and find the photographs pleasing.

I've bolded the links for those schoolhouses I think are the most photographically worthy or for which I've been able to dig up substantial information, so you should start with those. I've provided GPS coordinates and/or addresses for the sites which are no longer active schools, and have not been converted into private residences (several schoolhouses, thank goodness, have been preserved by such a conversion) so you can go visit these sites for yourself in real life. If you live in metro Detroit, please see Geer School as a superb entry point into this exploration.

Once you view a particular schoolhouse's page, you can click any photo to make it larger, then click it again to put it back.

I've organized the list of schoolhouses into two sections: one by Michigan County Name (alphabetically), and the other list by the date the page was last updated on this web site, in case you want to follow along as I continue to build this site and update it with future visits, future discoveries, new information, or corrections.

Some of the information I've gathered about these schools is from the "Bess Britton One-Room Schoolhouse Collection" at the Webster Memorial Library in Decatur, Michigan, and I thank the library and librarian for granting me access to that information shortly before COVID-19 changed everything.

If you have any additional information about any of these schoolhouses, or know of a schoolhouse I've missed, please email me using the link at the bottom of this page so I can add it and preserve the history of these buildings for everyone. If you own one of these schoolhouses and want me to remove it's location information, or remove it entirely from this web site, email me and I will do so.

The list of schoolhouses by County within Michigan

Allegan County

Arenac County

Barry County

Bay County

Berrien County

Branch County

Calhoun County

Cass County

Clinton County

Eaton County

Genesee County

Gratiot County

Hillsdale County

Huron County

Ingham County

Ionia County

Isabella County

Jackson County

Kalamazoo County

Kalkaska County

Kent County

Lapeer County

Leelanau County

Lenawee County

Livingston County

Macomb County

Midland County

Monroe County

Montcalm County

Muskegon County

Newaygo County

Oakland County

Ottawa County

Saginaw County

Sanilac County

Shiawasee County

St Clair County

St Joseph County

Tuscola County

Van Buren County

Washtenaw County

Wayne County

The list of schoolhouses by Date of Update on This Web Site (NOT the date of photography)

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