Heritage Trail Guide
Stop #7 - The Stepney Schoolhouse (c. 1830)
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As we leave lower Stepney and travel up the Bridgeport-Newtown Turnpike today known as Main Street to the intersection of Old Newtown Road is the Stepney School House circa 1830, one of two schoolhouses still standing in Stepney, located at 142 Main Street and owned by Susan Oberstadt.
The small, simple district schoolhouse was the cornerstone of public education in Connecticut from the colonial era into the twentieth century. By 1850 Monroe was divided into seven school districts; Stepney, East Village, Birdsey’s Plain, Cutler’s Farm, Centre, Elm Street and Walker’s Farm each with its own building. The Stepney one-room schoolhouse was built around 1830, when Monroe’s population had grown to about 1,500.
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District schoolhouses usually consisted of just one room. They were sparsely furnished, for taxpayers spent as little as possible on them. Students, ranging in age from near toddlers to late teens, were all taught by one teacher who had no special training as a teacher. Equipment was basic, and students often had to supply their own books and slates to write on. A fireplace or single stove heated the building in winter. Water had to be drawn from a well, and many schools even lacked outhouses. Sometime during its history the Stepney schoolhouse was lucky enough to get a double outhouse – one side for girls, the other for boys. If you look closely from the Dutchess Restaurant parking lot you will see the outhouse still standing today.
In 1872, 26 students were enrolled in the Stepney School. However, the number present on any given day could vary, depending on how badly a boy or girl was needed to work at home or how much importance their parents put on formal education. The state didn’t make school attendance compulsory until the late 1800s.
Students were taught the “three R’s” - “Reading, ’Riting, and ’Rithmetic,” along with some history, geography, or science. Whatever they learned at the district schoolhouse was all the formal education many students ever received.
Towns had been divided into school districts primarily because children had to walk to school. By 1935 Monroe had paved roads and buses transported students from any part of town in a matter of minutes. That year the seven local school districts were “consolidated.” Thereafter, all Monroe children from first through eighth grades attended the new Monroe Consolidated School, today the Monroe Elementary School.
In 1935, all of Monroe’s district schoolhouses were auctioned off to private individuals. Six still stand; five have been transformed like this one, into private residences. A second schoolhouse, the Birdsey’s Plain Schoolhouse still stands in Upper Stepney and is located at 37 Hattertown Road. It was a two-room structure built around the same time as the Stepney schoolhouse, in the Greek Revival style.
Architecturally, the Stepney Schoolhouse is a one and one-half story, three bay, gabled-roofed house resting on a stone foundation. It is a wood framed, clapboard structure. The fenestration is 6/6 with simple window surrounds. Despite its conversion to a dwelling, it retains its essential shape and vernacular form of an early 19th century school. A combined “girls” and “boys” outhouse is located at the south side of the building.
