One-Room School . . . Set For Historic Hyde Park

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.

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Condon sank some $1,500 of his own money into putting it into some semblance of order on this property where he started a mobile home park.

When approached by the historical group and the Jaycees' president Al Preston, Condon agreed to donate the building intact for a move to a suitable location.

The town historian holds the deed to the building. Several inspections have indicated that it may indeed be difficult to transport a building which has not been in use as a school since prior to World War I, but one long solid beam runs the length of the structure under the floorboards and the walls have been preserved of hand made bricks.

It was used for a time as a storage building for equipment by the Town of Hyde Park many years ago.

The organizers now wish to make the restoration of the one-room schoolhouse a community project, and plan to have an open house at the Hyde Park Town Hall sometime after the holidays to begin a fund raising campaign.

The Board of Education has reportedly been receptive to the relocation of the old building to one of its school properties, and legalities must be investigated prior to such a move. The board will have the last say so to the best location.

Meanwhile, the research continues, and Mrs. Fredriksen asks anyone with pertinent information or aged school furniture or books to contact her if a contribution to the restoration is wished.

If the necessary funds are raised for moving and restoring the school of many Hyde Park residents' grandparents, the move will be made in the spring of 1973.

And another vestige of Hudson Valley history will have been preserved for future generations to reflect upon.

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