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Eastern Pennsylvania » Beyond Blue Mountain to the Northern Tier » Snyder County » Salem » Herman Schoolhouse Museum

Herman Schoolhouse Museum

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1842, 1961. Old Salem Rd., north of U.S. 522
  • (William E. Fischer, Jr.)
  • (William E. Fischer, Jr.)

Snyder County's German population overwhelmingly voted against the Free School Act of 1834 because they opposed taxation for English-based secular education. The county's first public school opened in 1842 on land donated by David Herman to Penn Township. A one-room frame building constructed on a fieldstone foundation, Herman Schoolhouse was attended by rural students until 1882. For the next eighty years it stored farm equipment until 1961 when it was rescued by the School Children's Building Restoration Foundation. Unlike the typical white clapboard or red brick model with its standard cupola, Herman Schoolhouse is as rustic and simple as a colonial meetinghouse. The shingles, weatherboards, and six-over-six windows with their single wooden shutters are unpainted. The interior has vintage furnishings that re-create the one-room schoolhouse experience.

Writing Credits

Author: 
George E. Thomas
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Data

What's Nearby

Salem Evangelical Lutheran and Reformed Church (Rowe's Church)
Penns Creek Bridge
Joseph Pawling Estate
Susquehanna University
John Snyder House

Citation

George E. Thomas, "Herman Schoolhouse Museum", [Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-02-SN8.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 2

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania, George E. Thomas, with Patricia Likos Ricci, Richard J. Webster, Lawrence M. Newman, Robert Janosov, and Bruce Thomas. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012, 417-417.

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