As we worked last weekend to carefully take down tin ceiling plates and drywall, lath and plaster, it occurred to me that, to paraphrase a line from the donkey in Shrek the Movie, a schoolhouse is like an onion.
Eh?
Layers. Let me tell you what I mean. Consider the tin ceiling. We, along with most everyone else, have fallen in love with the ‘original’ tin ceilings.
As I started around the edges of the room, I realized that the tin is ON TOP of the drywall. How can this be if it’s ‘original’? I did a little Google research and found that drywall has been around since the early 1900’s, but was rarely used until the war, when labor and materials were scarce and drywall was a cheaper alternative than lath and plaster. So – 1940’s, perhaps. The school was still in operation until 1944, so it could have been put in while still a classroom.
Digging further, I found that the plaster underneath the tin ceilings was in pretty rough. Can you see how much it’s bowing?? How did that even stay up?
Perhaps the tin ceiling was put up because the plaster was falling down?? A nice layer of supporting boards and a tin ceiling would sure have fancied up a schoolroom.
And then on to the windows. If you look back, I wrote a post last year about why the west windows were covered up. A local historian put forth that a ‘scientist’ of the era convinced the local school boards that having open west windows interfered with right-handed children’s ability to learn, so they were filled in. Looking at what I found as window ‘filler’, I could buy this explanation.
But others contend that it was simpler than that, that the windows were covered up much later and simply as a protection from the cold NW winds of winter. Like the windows, there seems to be a hole in that theory, all based on the layers. As I pulled off the drywall, I found ‘new’ lath and plaster over the window opening. And that extended to where the old slate chalkboard had been. So if the windows were put in later, then the craftsman took down the chalkboard, used an old technique of lath and plaster over the patch, then replaced it all. It seems more likely that the windows were covered sometime before the 1940’s. The why – well that remains a mystery.
On a closing note, since we are using fictional character metaphors anyway, something big has been here….
What the heck is living under my shed?? Wombat. Small bear? Snipe.