BRIEFLY...
The Whitpain Public School building is a two-story schoolhouse located on the corner of Schoolhouse Rd and Skippack Pike in Blue Bell, PA. It has a distinctive style due in part to its large heptagonal turret on the front of the building, and Gothic-style inscription over the front of the building reading “AD Public School 1895”. It was constructed in 1895 by local architects/builders using locally available materials. The schoolhouse served to consolidate students from several one-room schoolhouses in the area, and to provide the first public high school (grades 9-11) in this rural area. The classroom operations ended in 1929 after the construction of the newly expanded Whitpain Township Consolidated School building on adjacent property. The Whitpain Public School building has been in use since 1895 serving first as a public school, and subsequently as the Whitpain police headquarters, overflow classroom space for the Whitpain School district, Whitpain Public Library, and currently serves as the headquarters for the Wissahickon Valley Historical Society and public museum. The interior and exterior of the building are remarkably original. The atmosphere inside the building is of the original late 19th century period schoolhouse, complete with its original slate chalkboards, wooden-plank floors and large glass windows. The overall atmosphere has a remarkable likeness to what one would envision for the 1895 period, except the space is used as a museum and library rather than a classroom. The Schoolhouse Rd and Skippack Pike sides of the property have a grassy yard and retain its original fieldstone walls at the perimeter in an essentially unchanged condition at the streets edges.
HISTORICAL
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WHITPAIN PUBLIC SCHOOL BLDG...
The Whitpain Public School is historically significant for its association with the development of education in historic Whitpain Township in the late 19th and early 20th century...<click here to read further>
BRIEF HISTORY OF
EDUCATION IN WHITPAIN TOWNSHIP...
There were five private, independent schools located in Whitpain Township when the Free School Act was passed n 1834...<click here to read further>
HISTORY OF THE
WHITPAIN PUBLIC SCHOOL 1895 BLDG...
Beginning in 1887, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed general laws authorizing the establishment of High Schools...<click here to read further>