This week’s Back Roads is the work of The Land Correspondents Tim King (story) and Jan King (photo)
THE LAND, AUGUST 19, 2011
Eight-sided history
“Where Farm and Family Meet”
32 A
octagonal country schoolhouses were built in Two Minnesota, we’ve been told.
Octagonal schoolhouse, Big Stone County, Minn.
One is still standing. That building served as the schoolhouse for District 13 in Artichoke Township of Big Stone County. District 13 was between the village of Correll and Artichoke Lake. Like many country schoolhouses, when District 13 closed it was used as the township hall. We learned all this from a lovely book, “Schoolhouses of Minnesota.” So, we headed to Artichoke Township to see this architectural curiosity. But why an octagonal schoolhouse? It seems that octagonal schoolhouses were locally common in the eastern U.S. as far back as 1721. According to one source, more than 100 of them were built between that time and the 1850s in the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. Some were also constructed in New York. The Quakers were apparently behind the eightsided schoolhouse movement. They argued that windows on seven sides of the building provided the best lighting for the students and teachers. The windows, which were high enough so students couldn’t be distracted by outside vistas, also saved on lighting oil. The Quakers also claimed that the buildings were easy to heat because heat from a centrally located stove easily reached everyone. These eastern schools had thick stone walls that held the heat in. The octagon shape also allowed teachers to be located in a way so that all students could easily be observed. There is no record of any octagonal schools being built after the middle of the 19th century. Mysteriously, the eight-sided Quaker schoolhouse design leapt across most of the eastern U.S. and landed in Minnesota’s western prairies in the 1890s. There, the community chose to build an octagonal schoolhouse from wood. The original schoolhouse had more windows than the building does now, apparently. Perhaps the cold prairie winds, the thin wooden walls, and the arrival of electric lighting, caused them to be boarded up. When we arrived in Artichoke Township we discovered that the schoolhouse had moved. A friendly neighbor said that vandalism had inspired township officials to move it to the county museum in Ortonville. The only octagonal building now in Artichoke Township is the gazebo in her garden. It was, she said, inspired by the schoolhouse. The Big Stone County Historical Society has done a wonderful job of caring for, and restoring, the building inside and out. It is well worth visiting.
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