
Monark Springs School - Monark Springs, MO, USA
N 36° 52.032 W 094° 17.461
15S E 384928 N 4080918
An old one-room school in the tiny town of Monark Springs in Newton County, Missouri
Waymark Code: WMK7NF
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 02/24/2014
Views: 3
In this area of the Ozarks, after the schools consolidated, many of the buildings were taken down, many of them were left standing to look like ghost schools, and many of them were reused as homes, churches, community buildings, and so on. There is one that was turned into a personal shop. This former school building is one that was turned into a home.
This Google Book gives a lot of history of the school (starting with "Another rural school with an interesting history..."). It dates back to before the American Civil War and was called Hickory Creek School. After the Missouri & North Arkansas Railroad was built through this town, the school was renamed Monark Springs School. In 1920 the original building was torn down and this native stone building built in its place.
The day I stopped by, the current owner was on hand, very friendly, and had a lot of information about what happened to the school. The previous owner was the one who converted the interior of this school into a home. At the same time, he redid the windows to provide more privacy, adding more native stone as he worked. You can still see the outlines of the old school-style long windows in the lines of stone. On the inside, he added a lower ceiling below the school's original high ceiling, before adding in walls.