The Norwich Village School, built 1898.
Jigsaw for August 29, 2026: https://puzzles.curioustorian.com/norwich-village-school
School started this week. The photograph above is the Norwich Village School, taken from across the road sometime soon after it went up in 1898. Electricity had reached the village, paving had not, and the only traffic is a horse and buggy. The spectators are there for the baseball game.
It is brick, and it has four rooms. Before the school stood here, Norwich University did. Fire took its South Barracks in 1866, and the college gave up on Norwich and moved to Northfield. It left the North Barracks behind, and the town spent the next thirty years finding uses for it, the last of them a school. In 1897 that burned too, and this building went up on the same foundation the following year.
The building is still there. It is the Marion Cross School now.
The same view, one evening this week. The maples now hide most of the school, which has grown as well: the block at the left is the 1951 addition, the one at the right is 1960. The gymnasium and more classrooms were added eastward in 1988.
The Norwich green (not “the Common”, as in many other New England towns) has an interesting history. We will revisit!
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A word of thanks
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Full-resolution images
In color (the puzzle image): https://puzzles.curioustorian.com/norwich-village-school-hires/norwich-village-school-1898-color.jpg
The original black and white: https://puzzles.curioustorian.com/norwich-village-school-hires/norwich-village-school-1898-original.jpg
Thanks for your support, as always,
Cameron Cross
Sources
Norwich Village School, accession 2007.56.5, collection of the Norwich Historical Society. Building dates and the sequence of the two Norwich University barracks from A History of Norwich, Vermont (Goddard and Partridge, 1905) and from the Norwich Historical Society's schoolhouse driving tour, researched by Lyssa Papazian. Colorization by DDColor, applied without redrawing or altering the original photograph.