Ichabod Crane Schoolhouse

This authentic, circa-1850 one-room schoolhouse served as a public school for the Town of Kinderhook into the 1940s. It replaced an earlier “log cabin-style” single-room school where a man named Jesse Merwin served as school master. Merwin, who was a longtime friend of the writer Washington Irving, is said to have been the “pattern” for Irving’s character of Ichabod Crane in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

Visitor Information

Location: 2589 NY-9H, Kinderhook, NY 12106

Hours: OPENS JUNE 1st

Admission: Adults $5, CCHS Members, students and children FREE

A “Legends & Lore” historic marker, awarded by the New York Folklore Society and William G. Pomeroy Foundation, stands a few yards from the school and commemorates this literary connection. Today, the Ichabod Crane Schoolhouse is a seasonal museum. See exhibitions, period school desks and other objects relating to one-room schoolhouse education in Columbia County.

History of the Ichabod Crane Schoolhouse

Inside, the Ichabod Crane Schoolhouse looks much like it did when children attended school here at the turn of the 20th century!

The Ichabod Crane Schoolhouse was initially constructed circa-1850 at the intersection of NY-9H and Fischer Road as the District #6 Schoolhouse for the town of Kinderhook. It was the second school built on that site, replacing the original log cabin school where Jesse Merwin — long thought to be the inspiration for Ichabod Crane in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” — served as schoolmaster. The school was closed in the 1940s when the local school district centralized.

During the 1950s and ’60s, it was saved from disrepair by a group of local women who retrofitted the space to function as an ad hoc community center. In 1952, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the schoolhouse to deliver a radio address praising “the work of women” and recognizing their efforts to preserve the historic school.

In 1974, the schoolhouse was moved 200 yards down the road to the Luykas Van Alen House site. That same decade, it was restored to its 1930s appearance. It remains an excellent and intact example of a rural, one-room schoolhouse with a gable roof, clapboard siding and a single pent-roofed entrance. The interior consists of a large classroom with two adjacent cloakrooms — one for boys and one for girls. The building was never modified to have heat or hot water and still retains its original 1929 wood-burning stove, wood flooring, chalkboards and double-hung sash windows. 

Listen to Eleanor Roosevelt's 1952 radio address:

Also On Site

Luykas Van Alen House circa 1737; one of the few remaining colonial Dutch homes in New York State.
Greg

Luykas Van Alen House

The 1737 Luykas Van Alen House in Kinderhook, NY is recognized as one of the best remaining examples of a Dutch Colonial farmhouse in the Hudson Valley.

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