And here we are, in the center of a rural town. When taking these photographs, I believed, that the building in front was a former school and the building at the back the school that replaced it.
I was right about the building behind but wrong with the wooden building. It wasn’t an old school, it was the teacher apartment building.
Because when I started writing this post, I ran across the architectural history report of the wooden building. And that’s when I learned some interesting facts.
A law made in the 1920’s made it mandatory for municipal schools to provide apartments for teachers. Two rooms and a kitchen for a female teacher, three rooms and a kitchen for a male. And in addition to that they were granted fully chopped firewood, lighting, a place for one cow in a cowshed, storage for the cow’s fodder and the firewood, a sauna, a toilet, fields for the cow and a half a hectare of agricultural land. For a lower level school the requirements were one room and a kitchen and a half a hectare of agricultural land.
In 1958 the differences between male and female teachers were abolished. But until 1967 you had to provide the apartments.
This teacher apartment building was built in the early 1920’s, and despite the law about teacher apartments being abolished in 1967, teachers lived here until the 1980’s. After that the school doctor and the school dentist had offices here as well as classes with intellectual disabilities were taught.
In the late 1990’s the building served as a place for the pupils to have guided activity after school hours and before the work day of their parents ended. In the early 2000’s it was abandoned completely and after that a debate has been ongoing whether to preserve it or demolish it. The balconies have since been demolished.
The latest court decisions are from late 2024, and they say that the building will stay. So let’s wait.
And while waiting, I will look for another point of entry.