Location: 42.21566, -84.53090, at 3201 Noble Rd, Spring Arbor, MI.
The original Bean School was built in 1830. It was replaced by a wooden schoolhouse built in 1874 built somewhere around here. That building burned down in about 1924, leading to the construction of the present building in 1925. It educated K-8 grades until it closed in 1957. It then housed a gift shop, a cider mill and other merchants over the years until it was moved in September, 2000 to the school ground beside the present, modern, Bean School, where it was restored since it was badly in need of repair. So far, the outside of the building has been scraped and painted, new outside entry doors have been installed, the windows have been replaced, a basement floor has been poured, and a new furnace has been installed. Relying 100% on volunteers for labor, Bean School supporters look forward to being able to dedicate their historic school as a living museum. After restoration with the help of alumni and friends, the restored schoolhouse was dedicated on Friday, June 8, 2007 as "Old Bean School".
The Bean School of 1925 which exists on the grounds of the modern Bean Elementary School is a wooden structure painted white on a modern concrete foundation with a single centered front door in a very small foyer, surrounded by a small window on each side. On the roof above the front door is a bell tower with a school bell still inside it. One side of the school has a small window in the front, probably for a cloak room, with five large windows behind it and an emergency exit doorway behind those five windows. The back of the building has no windows or doors except for a basement or crawl-space access door. The other side of the building has only that single small window in front, for the other sex's cloak room.
