Rensselaer Adventures

This blog reports events and interesting tidbits from Rensselaer, Indiana and the surrounding area.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

More pictures from the North Newton Township School (I)

In November I had a post on the North Newton Township School based on pictures that someone e-mailed me. A month or two ago I got another, much larger batch of pictures, so it is time to do a few more posts on this old ruin.

The front of the school is heavily overgrown with trees so that one cannot get a really good view of it. There are two front doors, and both have staircases. The one that is visible in this picture is easier to use because the other one is covered with debris.
For some reasons someone has carried a radiator out of the building and left it in front of the door.
The trees obscure the old bell tower.
It almost appears that two windows were bricked up on the south side of the building, but the brickwork was original and was decorative. The same pattern appears on the north side.
This is the school from the back. On the upper floor were two large classrooms, each with five large windows. In the basement were two rooms at either end of the building with four windows. Between these two rooms was the coal bin and the boiler room.
Below is a closeup of the back showing the coal chute. It is in the middle of the building, and the window with the broken glass is obscured in the picture above. Notice the decorative brick work that separates the lower level from the upper level.
Inside the lower level, the room below is at the left in the picture showing the back of the building. You are viewing the first four windows on the lower level from the inside. As you can see, the plaster and lathing of the ceiling has collapsed and covers the floor. This was probably used as a lunch room or as a gym. (See an account of the identical South Newton Township School here.)
At the other end is a room that appears to be identical except that it only has one window that is not boarded up.
There were two bathrooms in the basement, one at each end of the hallway. They had a window that faced the front of the building.
And here is the other one. You can see in this picture that the floor is broken up. Apparently this is the result of freeze-thaw cycles. The building has been abandoned for over forty years, so nature has had lots of time to start reclaiming it.
What I found most interesting in the basement was the heating plant and the water supply, but they will have to wait until another day.

1 comment:

Jasper County Historical Society said...

This breaks my heart, since there was someone willing to buy this structure years ago to restore and use.