Southwest District School - Bloomfield, Connecticut
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 41° 49.063 W 072° 45.999
18T E 685492 N 4631949
Historic former one-room school in rural Bloomfield, Connecticut.
Waymark Code: WMC5EA
Location: Connecticut, United States
Date Posted: 07/27/2011
Views: 1
"Southwest District School is a small 1- story gable-roofed stone building built in 1858. It is situated very close to Simsbury Road (Route 185), which runs in a northwesterly direction, and is oriented with its gable end facing the highway. The surrounding neighborhood is a rural residential area, with several 18th and early 19th-century dwellings interspersed among more modern houses. The school's lot is small, only one-twentieth of an acre, and there are no outbuildings....
Southwest District School served an outlying part of town, near the corner where Bloomfield, Simsbury, and West Hartford come together, that was predominantly agricultural throughout the 19th century. Characterized by widely scattered family farms, the area typically sent some 15 to 20 children to the school. The present schoolhouse was built in 1858, replacing an earlier building, about which little is known.
By the 1890s, Southwest District School began to feel the effects of a slight rise in population in Bloomfield. Railroad connections with Hartford, beginnings of suburban growth, and a new lease on life for agriculture brought about by tobacco cultivation all spared Bloomfield the precipitous decline experienced in most rural areas of the state. In 1900 enrollment at Southwest District School reached 31, which the School Visitors considered overcrowded, and by 1905 there were 35 children.
Finally, in 1909, the Town of Bloomfield took over the schools from the separate school districts and began a program of consolidation. The Town built large centralized schools that allowed the children to be grouped by age into grades. One by one the one-room schoolhouses were rendered superfluous. With the opening of two modern schools in September of 1922, Southwest District School, along with three other one-room schools, was discontinued." - National Register Nomination
Address:
430 Simsbury Rd.
Bloomfield, Connecticut United States
Web Site: [Web Link]
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