Location: Originally at 42.78505, -83.05854, on the west side of Mound Road, just south of 31 Mile Road, at 66885 Mound Rd, Washington, MI, moved 1/2 mile on October 24, 2025 to the new Thorington Park at 42.78504,-83.05202
Thorington Schoolhouse was built before 1859, and was in use until the 1954-1955 school year. The school was annexed to Romeo Community Schools around 1955. It is a rectangular wood-frame schoolhouse. The schoolhouse was built to the standards of a Michigan one-room schoolhouse, with 3 large windows on each side to let in daylight sufficient for the students to easily see their work. A pot-bellied stove was in the center of the room to provide heat during the cold Michigan winters. A single centered door is in the front of the building, with a transom window above it to let light into the foyer, and a large window on either side. The windows have triangular pediments above them. The door has a simple flat pediment above it which is falling apart. The school was once considered worthy of some investment since it has a metal roof, but that roof has decayed to the point where it doesn't really protect the schoolhouse any more. There is a bell tower, without any school bell inside. No school identification sign exists any more. The back of the schoolhouse has no windows or doors. The school looks quite similar to Brownsville School No 1, near the southwest corner of Michigan; maybe they were built from the same plans?
Some views of the interior of this schoolhouse, circa 2015-2016, are shown below:
Gravel Pits now scrape the land behind the schoolhouse, as shown in this 2016 photograph behind the schoolhouse:
The Thorington Settlement is the oldest settlement in Washington Township, Macomb County, Michigan. It is identified as the ghost town of Thoringtonville on Google Maps as of June 2021 but nothing is there except the schoolhouse, a few old farmhouses, and some new housing developments. James Thorington (born 1766, died Jan 17 1836) was the first settler to this area, arriving in 1819, 18 years before Michigan would become a state. He is buried in Brabb Cemetary, on 31 Mile Rd just east of Mound Road, very close to the schoolhouse, and his tombstone still stands, evidenced by the first photo below. The Brabb Cemetary, whose entrance is shown in the second photo below, honors another of the early prominent families in the neighborhood, and their house named the Brabb House on Van Dyke Avenue in Romeo, shown in the 3rd photo below, is the venue in which my wife and I were married.
Thorington Schoolhouse on the Move, 2025
During 2025, Washington Township announced they have bought the Thorington Schoolhouse and will move it to a new park nearby on 31 Mile Rd and use high-school craftsmen students to restore it. This is a wonderful announcement, potentially saving this schoolhouse from the ravages of nature. They cleared away the vegetation near the schoolhouse in preparation for the move, and I took the two photos below of the cleared-away schoolhouse during April of 2025. As of July 30, 2025, the date of the move is still to be determined.
Much work was done on the schoolhouse to prepare it for it's move. I visited on October 6, 2025, and the bell tower had been removed, the metal roof had been removed, the rafters and roof had been repaired/rebuilt, many rotting studs and boards had been replaced, the foundation had been removed, and the schoolhouse had been placed on a custom-made trailer for the move. Note in the first two photos below, taken from across the street, electrical wires are present which will be in the way of the move. In my photos at the top of the page, I had removed the wires in post-processing, or had taken the photo near enough to the schoolhouse to put the wires behind me.
The move was scheduled for October 22, 2025, but rain delayed it until October 24th. Sunrise was at 7:57 AM, so shadows were still long when I arrived at the scene at 8:50 AM and took my first photo, the 1st photo below. A closer view from the same angle is in the 2nd photo below. Notice that the wires are down. Actually, they're temporarily buried and covered with plywood where the truck and schoolhouse will drive over them, as shown in the 3rd photo below. They'll be re-hung from the telephone poles after the move.
The right side of the schoolhouse is shown in the 1st and 2nd photos below, and the ceremony/speeches before the schoolhouse move began in earnest is shown in the 3rd photo below. The guy talking, under the left-front window in that 3rd photo is Washington Township Supervisor, Sebastian Sam Previti.
The final roadblocks to getting the move underway were the overhead electrical wires over Mound Road on the south side of 31 Mile Road, and the wires over 31 Mile Road on the east side of Mound Road. We all waited while DTE spent a long time moving those wires temporarily to allow the schoolhouse to pass. The 1st photo below shows DTE starting to lower the wires over Mound Road, the 2nd shows the wires down, and the 3rd and 4th photos show the boards which were put in place to cover the wires and prevent damage when the truck and schoolhouse drove over them.
So that was enough to get the schoolhouse moving onto Mound Road, heading north, even if the wires around the corner on 31 Mile Road weren't yet out of the way.
Approaching 31 Mile Road on Mound Road... They had to take it very slow and check in the 3rd photo below that they were safely crossing over the electric wires.
After a short delay at the intersection, DTE had disconnected the wires crossing 31 Mile Road from one of the poles, and used two cherry-pickers to lift the line up higher than the top of the approaching schoolhouse.
Once the turn onto 31 Mile Road was complete, I was down in the ditch and snapped a photo of the underside of the schoolhouse, and then one of the cigar-wielding driver of the truck.
By then I had left my wife for 2 hours and I thought it was time to go back home, so I watched the schoolhouse drive away from me on 31 Mile Road. There were no more wires to be moved, and the new site for the schoolhouse was only a couple hundred feet down the road from my 2nd photo below.
So I went back to my car, stopping off to see the now-empty lot where the schoolhouse had stood for 166 years, from 1859 until 2025 in the 1st photo below. The stone foundation of the school still remains on the site in the 2nd photo below, but will probably be removed. And the gravel pit behind the old location of the schoolhouse is still in operation, in the 3rd photo below.
The move is further documented on this facebook post