District No. 3 Nottawa Township School
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Nottawa Stone School (District No. 3 Nottawa Township School)
1870, John W. Schermerhorn, builder; 1880s addition. MI 86 at Filmore Rd., 5 miles east of Centreville
In 1870, the County Superintendent of Public Instruction recorded that this district, which was “considerably below the average wealth of rural districts,” erected this one-story fieldstone school with a belfry to replace a wood-frame building. Probably designed by Schermerhorn, a farmer who was the director of the district and the school's builder, it has round-arched windows topped by incipient hood moldings and a central double-door entrance with a fanlight. The noble character of the little school derives from the skillful manner in which the fieldstones are laid in the exterior walls. The stones are regularly coursed in the foundation, randomly coursed in the walls, and laid in even courses in the gable. Poorly conceived tuck pointing has somewhat reduced the exquisite quality of the masonry. At its completion, the school seemed to the same superintendent to be “in architectural appearance seldom equaled in the most wealthy rural districts, and in solid convenience and finish . . . a model.”
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Location: Centreville, MichiganRegional Overviews:Architect:Styles:no metadata availableMaterials:
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Citation
Kathryn Bishop Eckert, "Nottawa Stone School (District No. 3 Nottawa Township School)", [Centreville, Michigan], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MI-01-SJ2.
Print Source
Buildings of Michigan, Kathryn Bishop Eckert. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012, 222-222.
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