What Happened To Michigan’s One-Room Schoolhouses?

When I was still in elementary school, every year we would take a field trip to a historical village inside of the Allegan County Fair that featured a variety of old buildings, an old church, and an old one-room schoolhouse. Oddly enough, it was in this schoolhouse that I lost my second-grade spelling bee (which still haunts me to this day).

One-room schoolhouses used to be the norm all around the country, but what happened to them? Many have been demolished, some have been converted into homes (my mom's family friend lives in a converted school HOUSE), while others slowly fell apart.

Michigan One Room Schoolhouse Association

According to the Michigan One Room Schoolhouse Association, there used to be over 7,200 one-room schools in Michigan. The MORSA was founded in 1993 and works to research and restore one-room school buildings.

The association has found and documented nearly 7,000 schoolhouses around the state. They've painstakingly documented and classified each of the buildings based on building materials, when it was built, and the current state of the building.

READ MORE: Are There Still Payphones In Grand Rapids?

Oldest Standing School

The oldest schoolhouse building still standing in Michigan, according to their database, is in Gun Plain Township, Allegan County. It is a former log school built in 1834. In 1955, records show it still had 16 students. It now appears to have been turned into a home.

If you want to explore more of the schoolhouses, you can view the entire database of schoolhouses here.