Evans Schoolhouse

This is the very ideal of the one-room schoolhouse. It is moving to observe how much civic dignity a simple wooden structure on a low rubble foundation can attain from a compact, elemental mass, straightforward carpentry, and an intuitive sense of the just placement of openings within the elevation and of the graduated accent of openings for their relative importance by simple moldings. Whereas the Clarkville School ( GL1), in the opposite corner of Glocester, possesses the impersonality of a carpenter expertly working his way through a specified and standardized program, here the builder seems to be finding his own way in accord with an agreed-upon model. The school, an “institution” in Clarkville, is more a “house” here. The original precinct of the abandoned school is also preserved, spreading tree in front and privy behind.

Modified mid-nineteenth-century and Greek Revival farmhouses (the Place and D. Evans farms) are opposite. The latter, delightfully known as Seldom Seen Farm, which operates as a sheep farm, contains a string of outbuildings and barns connected to one another and to the house, which is rare in Rhode Island.