N5311 Moss Hill Rd

Summary

Spring Creek School
N5311 Moss Hill Road, Town of Albion, Jackson County
Date of Construction: 1885

The Spring Creek School is an excellent example of the simple Front Gable vernacular form one-story-tall one-room type of building that typified rural schools built in Jackson County and elsewhere in Wisconsin in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The school was built for the Town of Albion School District Board in 1885 as a replacement for an earlier, smaller parochial school building that was located nearby.

In 1911-1912, for instance, there were fourteen small rural one or two room schools in the Town of Albion alone and 123 in Jackson County as a whole. Today, only four of the Town of Albion buildings are still extant in one form or another and the Spring Creek School is the only intact example in the Town of Albion that still occupies its original site and retains integrity. Since the school ceased to be used as a school in 1962 it has housed a museum dedicated to showcasing the history of rural education in Jackson County and the building's significance is strengthened by its excellent and highly original exterior and interior. The Spring Creek School is also now Jackson County’s best and most intact nineteenth century example of this increasingly rare and highly threatened building type.

Like most one-room schoolhouses, the exterior of the Spring Creek School is simple in design and its most outstanding feature is the decorative wood elements that enframe its entrance door. The interior consists of a center entrance and two equally small rooms on either side of it that served as a kitchen and as a library, and these rooms open into the classroom proper. Like other schools of the day, the Spring Creek School did not have indoor plumbing and it was heated by a wood stove located in the classroom. Wood was supplied by the families of the children who attended the school and the building had to wait until well into the twentieth century before it was electrified.

The Harrisburg School continued to serve its rural community until 1962, when the Town’s schools were consolidated. The building and its land then reverted back to the Thomas family, who owned the surrounding farm, and it was a member of that family that bought the building and began the process of restoring the school as a museum. Today, the beautifully restored Spring Creek School belongs to the Jackson County Historical Society, and it is now open to the public during the summer months.

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