Little Red Schoolhouse open for education once again
The “Little Red Schoolhouse” has always been a place for education — it was the first public school in Butler, acted as office space for the board of education and once held the city’s first public library.
On Saturday, Aug. 16, the building on West Jefferson Street reopened yet again as a place for education, after more than a year of renovations. The Butler County Historical Society commissioned its refurbishment, so it could be a piece of living history — which the society’s executive director, Jen Ford, kicked off during its reopening ceremony.
“People used it as an auxiliary office space for the board of education. They used it as a storage shed, they used it as the school nurse’s office,” she said. “Believe it or not, this was Butler’s first public library.”
What was originally known as Butler Public School Number in 1838, after Pennsylvania lawmakers stipulated that every community have a free public school house for youth education. As Ford explained, the building would be replaced by other educational facilities in the decades following its opening, but the schoolhouse remained a fixture in Butler education, until it was given to the historical society a few decades ago.
Ford said the refurbishment of the school house is an investment into the preservation of history, which will pay off when people in the area enter its one room to see what life was like before their time.
“Our history, whatever it might be, will eventually move from memory into history into legend into myth and then into deep time,” Ford said. “The pace at which that occurs is up to us... This community has pushed that timeline back.”
Ford said in 2024 that the late C. Timothy Shaffer, a former state senator and district judge, willed the society “a six-figure amount” upon his death, which the organization used to renovate the Little Red Schoolhouse. Additionally, the Daughters of the American Revolution gave the society $9,000 meant for use on the Little Red Schoolhouse. The Daughters of the American Revolution uses the building for its meetings.
Although the building has new structural standings, a fresh coat of paint and even modern plumbing, the classroom is outfitted with old wooden desks and seats, a heater in the middle of the room and chalk boards. Members of the historical society also collected items they found underneath the floor boards and preserved them in a glass case, so people can view what materials students would have used in the 1800s.
Joyce Rauschenberger, president of the historical society’s board of directors, said the building being a piece of living history, and the society is planning for it to be a hub for some of its activities in the years to come. She added that the historical society plans to work with Butler Area School District and other school districts to once again have field trips to the Little Red Schoolhouse.
Rauschenberger also said the Lowrie House and the Cooper Cabin are being renovated as well, also to improve visitor experience to the historical sites.
“We’re probably going to be doing more educational activities here,” Rauschenberger said. “We’re going to preserve this for another hundred years, and also show how important it is, how important history is to our area.”
While Ford is retiring in September, she didn’t let the opportunity to share some perspective on time go to waste at the opening of the school house.
“When this place was built, Revolutionary War Soldiers were still alive,” Ford said. “You could actually talk to someone who served.”
The Civil War was still years away when the school was built, Ford said.
“Boys who attended this school grew up to enlist in the Union and serve on the battlefields of the Civil War,” Ford said. “They went from Public School Number One; as men, they went into battle.”
