E. L. Moore's Five Window Schoolhouse

All photos courtesy James L. Dixon

I misidentified this one when I first saw it. I was so excited to see the log church that I thought this model was its clapboard sided brother that also appeared in The little church on the hill. No, this model is a schoolhouse.

We've seen another ELM schoolhouse that looks almost the same as this one: the white clapboard sided one that appeared in the lost article, Village School. The biggest difference is the school we saw before had 4 windows on each sidewall, and this one has 5.

The 4 window school dates from 1961, but I'm not sure of the vintage of this 5 window version as it doesn't have a date on the bottom. As the materials and design of both are nearly identical, I'll take a wild guess and say the 4 and 5 window versions were built one after the other, as he was known to have built other duplicates in close succession.

The two models aren't completely identical. As well as the window count, the bell tower and chimney are different in detail, as are a number of other features.

But, both have a blank back wall.

The interiors are very similar, but the 4 window version has more detail and a story to tell. I like that both have pianos.

I see a detail problem here too: there's no sheet music on the piano :-) Let's look at the one in the 4 window version; ah, no sheet music on that one either. What's the world coming to?