One-Room Schoolhouse ONE-ROOM SCHOOL . . . SET FOR HISTORIC HYDE PARK Reprinted with permission of the Daily Freeman, Kingston
One elementary school in the Hyde Park School District may end up with a one-room schoolhouse next spring, if all goes according to plan. The plan is one being worked out by the Hyde Park History Study Group and Hyde Park Jaycees, with the cooperation of the school board. It would remove the ancient and presently shabby, one-room schoolhouse from its plot of land at the intersection of Crum Elbow Road and Spellman Drive and refurbish it after trucking it to a new site in the town. The purpose, according to Town Historian Beatrice Fredriksen of Bard Park, is to attempt to create a miniature museum by restoring the exterior and interior of the building and setting up a facsmile of what it was like to go to school more than 50 years ago in Hyde Park, complete with old desks, blackboards, and textbooks. "We would like to gain insight into the past," she remarked in telling the story of how the project initially got underway. An oldtime schoolteacher Phoebe Rymph of Staatsburg had described life in the one-room - schoolhouse era to the open Study Group and it was remarked, "It's too bad we haven't saved any." It happened that a parcel of property purchased by Neal Condon several years ago contained the old District Three schoolhouse in a sad state of disrepair. 86
