One-Room School House (Emmons School)
This is where learning began in the late 1800's. Emmon's School District #2 was established in 1882.
The Emmons schoolhouse, an original country one-room schoolhouse located northeast of Washington, was moved to Washington to become part of the society's downtown museum complex. The move was completed December 7, 2006.
The schoolhouse is especially important to Washington County's educational history. The Emmons schoolhouse was the first organized one-room school district in the county and Washington County once had more one-room schoolhouses than any county in Kansas.
The moving was done by a crew from Valley Moving, LLC, based out of Wamego, as well as with local labor and volunteers from the Washington County Historical Society.
To get the structure ready for a move, the crew had to dig an access area at the front and back of the schoolhouse. Two steel beams were then placed lengthwise under the schoolhouse and four hydraulic jacks were used to lift the building. There were also two more steel beams placed crosswise inside the schoolhouse to reinforce the base of the structure.
The process can be a slow one. The schoolhouse measures 24.5 x 48 feet and took 30 tons of hydraulic pressure to lift the building, according to Clifford Tessendorf, Valley Moving. However, Tessendorf said that weight included the beams and a lot of foundation rock that was laying up in the frame of the building. He said most buildings of this kind weighed around 20 tons.
The limestone foundation was then pulled away and the front base of the building was reinforced since it was sagging. The moving process will actually take the sag away. One day, the crew planned to lift and move the building off the foundation. (It takes a 13-horsepower engine 1 minute 45 seconds to lift the building 12 inches.) The actual move was performed later. When the building was moved, it traveled to Washington on a flatbed trailer at around 10 m.p.h. It had to slow down or stop so overhead wires could be moved. The schoolhouse was put on a concrete block foundation on an empty lot at the east side of the southeast corner of the Washington square.
Tessendorf complimented Washington County locals for the amount of help they provided the moving crew with the project. He said there are often promises of help with these kinds of projects, but the help doesn't always come through. Here, they've had plentiful help.
Valley Moving tries to move one historical building per year as a sort of community service, according to Tessendorf, but this year they've already done three or four. All of the labor and equipment usage is offered for free. The Washington County Historical Society members are picking up the cost of meals for the crew as well as hotel stays when they spend the night.
The entire schoolhouse was painted as close to original as possible. Ross said the bell tower had been preserved and was put back on the building after the move, along with the school bell being re-installed.
Desks and other artifacts from the school were removed some time ago were re-installed to match what the interior of the schoolhouse would have been like when it was still in use.
