The Village That Volunteers Built
COPENHAGEN SCHOOLHOUSE
In 1982, the Naperville Heritage Society constructed a replica of the Copenhagen Schoolhouse as it appeared in 1870. The original schoolhouse, built in the 1840s and used as a school until approximately 1922, had been located at the southeast corner of Route 59 and 83rd Street. Along with a small church and a couple of farms, it made up the community once known as Copenhagen. One of the first schools in this area, the structure was a balloon frame building of Greek Revival architecture. When Naper Settlement obtained access to the original building in 1981, it then stood at Route 59 and 75th Street having been put to adaptive use as a dairy barn. Upon inspection of the building by a historical architect, the building was determined to be beyond repair or restoration. Thus the Naperville Heritage Society decided to replicate the structure, as the last one-room school from the Naperville area. Careful documentation and measured drawings of original exterior and interior architectural features provided the blueprints for the reconstruction. These careful recordings, combined with oral histories collected from recollections of people who attended the school, created the faithful reconstruction of the old schoolhouse seen on the Settlement grounds today. |
Martin
Mitchell Mansion |
Naperville Heritage Society is a not-for-profit organization.
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