Old Sterling Schoolhouse still Standing Today

On the backroads off route 28, in an area known to the locals as “Old Sterling,” there resides a 140-year-old piece of history: the original Sterling schoolhouse. The one-story, two-room detached frame building with metal roof, oak and pine floors and buckled walls was the first public school in Sterling built by Loudoun County.

All through the nineteenth century the one to two room school was frequently the focus for people’s lives outside the home. Besides being used for educating children, it was a place where Church services, Christmas parties, dances, community suppers, lectures and spelling bees were held.

The Old Sterling schoolhouse still stands at 1000 Ruritan Circle, not far from the corner of Atlantic Blvd. and West Church Road. According to Loudoun Historian Eugene Scheel, Broad Run School District No. 6 purchased the acre lot on October 11, 1879 from Dr. James E. Warner at a discount price of $60. The school was completed and ready for the spring term in 1880 and served until 1947 when it was replaced by the then, modern all brick Sterling Elementary.

In winter, only a coal stove heated the schoolhouse. The 15-foot-high ceilings and the absence of wall insulation kept the classrooms cool, so students wore their coats all day long. The small 26’x72’ building on stone foundation was eventually heated by two double burner kerosene stoves which greatly enhanced the students’ comfort. The building was lit by electricity, but by 1940 was in poor condition. The school which once enrolled forty students had no running water or bathroom but two outhouses did exist in the backyard, one for boys and one for girls. The old schoolhouse still retains its interior treatments including the use of bead board, wood paneling, tin-lined ceilings and the remaining field stone foundation.

There were 81 small schools in 1880 Loudoun County. Back then before busses and improved rural roads, the schools themselves had to be scattered out within walking distance of the students’ homes or they did not make it to school at all. These community-based schools contributed to the small village cohesiveness and allowed students of farming families to travel to school by foot.

Tom Hummer was born on a Sterling farm in 1935. His mother Grace Hummer taught at the Sterling school from 1926 until 1934. However, Tom, who attended public school from 1941-1953, never matriculated to the Sterling school because he would have had to walk one and a half miles east. Instead Tom caught a private bus driven by P.J. Coleman going only one way west from Old Ox Road through Sterling to the elementary/high school in Ashburn. Tom said that there were only two other private buses working in the eastern sector during this time. T.J. Crouch drove west on Route 7 from Sterling to Broad Run to Ashburn and L. Solomon came east from the Broadlands area.

Another Sterling resident Hugh L. Ball was born in 1937 and attended the school from 1944-47. His mother Peggy Testerman taught at the school from 1936-1937. Hugh informed me that the front room was for grades 1-3 and back room for grades 4-7. The children carried water from a neighbor’s house using a three-gallon clay crock. The crock was placed in the Cloak Room and had a spigot for pouring water into paper cups during break time. Local ladies brought in soup at lunch and kept it warm by placing the pot on one of the stoves and the children ate in the Cloak Room.

The school closed in 1947 and the county sold the building to H.F. Keen on November 20, 1947, for $3,100. Keen, a farmer, renovated the building by partitioning it off into six rooms. It was a family rental until 1980 when Grandma Betty Geoffroy leased the building and established the very successful Sterling Schoolhouse Antiques from 1980 through 2007. Since then, the property has been used by a Pentecostal church, landscaping company, carpet cleaning service and a heavy equipment operator to park vehicles.

Residents of Old Sterling appreciate this over a century old relic and want to preserve the timeworn schoolhouse before it ends up as yet another storage facility. Local folks consider this building a historic treasure and preservation-minded people in the community are making, efforts to save the schoolhouse by having it incorporated in a redevelopment project for Old Sterling. We have one last opportunity to rescue a small fragment of Old Sterling. If interested in saving this old structure, contact Jackie Ewing at jackievln2@earthlink.net.