This historic one-room schoolhouse can be found in Chocorua Village in the town of Tamworth, New Hampshire, and is a rare Stick style example of its type. The one-room schoolhouse was built around 1880 for the village and was one about 19 district schoolhouses in the town of Tamworth, all servicing remote villages for area children. The school eventually closed when consolidated schools took over in the 20th century, and this charming Victorian schoolhouse has since been converted to a private residence with rear wings added.
The village of South Tamworth, New Hampshire grew during the 19th century. In 1824, a Methodist Episcopal Society organized, and constructed the South Tamworth United Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832. Lumber mills, homes, a store and blacksmith shop were built and the small hamlet thrived. Also at this time, the local Women’s Christian Temperance Union was active in South Tamworth, and reported that they were, “holding the fort, and trying to keep the boys from drinking cider.” In 1894, 30 South Tamworth residents banded together to establish the Union Hall Association, to “promote the causes of Temperance, Religion, Education and Music among ourselves, our associates and successors, and for the general good of the public.” This structure, Union Hall, was built around the time of the association’s founding in 1894 and is a vernacular example of a New England community building. Since its construction, the South Tamworth Union Hall has served as a vital community space hosting dances, community meetings, and local events. By the late 20th century, the building began to show its age and with little use, the hall was threatened with demolition. A band of area residents fundraised and oversaw a restoration of the building in the 1980s with the Union Hall Association continuing to rent the building to local organizations and for private functions, preserving the important role the structure has played in the history of the local community.
The former Ashland Junior High Schoolstands on a rise overlooking Ashland’s village center, on School Street just east of the entrance to the modern Ashland Elementary School. It is a three-story brick building designed in the Second Empire style and is topped by a mansard roof. The exterior is little changed from its original construction, although the interior has been subjected to period modernization after decades of vacancy and conversion to offices. The school was built in 1877 in response to the poor conditions of Ashland District Schools at the time. The school was closed in 1990, and the town voted to demolish it in 2000. The building was listed in the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance’s Seven to Save in 2007. A community effort rescued the building from that fate, thanks to the Ashland Historical Society which advocated for the sale of the building and subsequent restoration by the Tri-County Community Action Program, which occupies the building to this day. Preservation wins!
The Scribner Mill building in Ashland stands as an architecturally and historically significant industrial building that tells the story of the community as a manufacturing center of the lakes region of New Hampshire. Built in 1880 by owner Ambrose Scribner, the brick structure served as a hosiery factory and is a late example of a mill building in the Second Empire architecture style. Owners today have spruced up the building which had previously been left vacant, to rent as office and light manufacturing space by Minus33, a merino wool apparel brand, and the purchased helps to reclaiming the important textile heritage of New England. The building retains its iconic mansard roof, brick corbeled cornice and entry tower, though many window remain boarded up.
The Ashland Town Hall in Ashland, New Hampshire, was built in 1871, three years after the town separated from Holderness, due to its growing economy as an industrial village compared to its mother-town’s more agricultural character. Constructed of brick, the facade is dominated by its gable roof which reads as a pediment and bays divided by brick pilasters which harkens back to the Greek Revival style; while the use of arched brick mouldings which is a common element in the Italianate style. The handsome, well-proportioned structure was used for town meetings and elections until 1950, and in 1952, the building was used by the school district as the village school. The building returned to municipal functions in 1972 and has since housed the Ashland Town Offices. The Old Ashland Town Hall was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
One of the many one-room schoolhouses of rural New England, this late-19th century example can be found in the town center of Bow, New Hampshire. The vernacular schoolhouse served hundreds of pupils in the northern part of town, from its construction in 1894 until 1924 when it was moved to its present location near the old Town Hall, where it was in use until 1945. In 1948, the School District sold the school to the nearby Baptist Church for Sunday school classes. The Town bought the building from the Church in 1968 and restored it as an historic site. Today, the rebuilt Snow Roller used in the early 1900s to pack snow down for passage of horse-drawn sleighs and wagons, and a mill stone, sit nearby the old schoolhouse as sort of an open-air museum.
New Ipswich, New Hampshire, is a town that oozes New England charm! Winding back roads are lined with Colonial-era homes and buildings, lovingly maintained by stewards and neighbors to create the quintessential small town feeling. New Ipswich was granted in 1735 to 60 inhabitants of Ipswich, Massachusetts, where the name is derived, by colonial Governor Jonathan Belcher and the General Court of Massachusetts. European settlement began here in 1738, when Abijah Foster arrived to the area with his wife and infant daughter. At the center of town, a new Town Hall was built in 1817 as a combination town hall and private academy with funds provided by the town government and by the trustees of New Ipswich Academy. The building was constructed under the direction of Deacon Nathaniel Gould, using materials salvaged from a disused meetinghouse of 1770. The arched gable window is reputed to have been taken from the meeting house, as are twisted balusters on the gallery stairway inside. As completed in 1817, the building had a full second floor which provided the academy with a lecture room, a small library, and a laboratory, but that was taken over by 1869 when the Town renovated the building, removing a tower and belfry, and occupied the second floor spaces. The building is still owned by the town, and is used occasionally for civic functions, with town offices in a mundane, newer building a short distance away.
Isaac Lord (1772-1838), the namesake of Lord’s Hill, came to Effingham, New Hampshire by 1791. An enterprising man, he was the most important figure in the village’s early history and in its architectural development. By 1792, Lord opened Effingham’s first store on the Hill, and soon thereafter began building a house that also served as the local tavern, this Federal style structure. As Lord prospered as a merchant and innkeeper, he enlarged the Tavern with a large ell connecting the main block to the 3-story barn. The fine Federal tavern was embellished with a vestibule and a triple window. The high quality of the Tavern foretold the character and scale of Isaac Lord’s later buildings nearby. The Tavern stayed in the extended family until 1903. Throughout the 20th century, the property was used as an inn and restaurant, including a stint as a dance hall. By the 21st century, though, deferred maintenance and successive attempts to fix the building ended in mortgage sales, foreclosure, and most recently, a tax deed, the the Town of Effingham recently acquired the property with the aim to restore the significant building. It was sold to a private owner in May 2024 and awaits its future. The Lord’s Tavern was listed in the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance’s ‘Seven to Save’, to advocate for its preservation and funding.
Buildings of New England 