Black River Township Schoolhouse Revisited

Since I’ve been hanging around the intersection of Meister and Leavitt Roads here on the blog for the last two days, I might as well loiter there a little longer.

One of the topics that I’ve revisited several times is the old red brick schoolhouse that used to be at that very intersection on the northeast corner. It first appeared on the 1874 map of Black River Township. 

After serving its educational purpose for decades, it was abandoned by the late 1920s. It found new use as the administration building for Lorain’s new Port Mills Airport in 1929.

It was later torn down and replaced by the Black River Township fire station. When Black River Township ceased to exist in 1964, the station became Lorain Fire Station No. 7. (Today the building is a storage facility for Lorain Police.)

Aside from the images in the newspaper clippings from the time of the Port Mills opening, I’ve never seen an actual photograph of the old schoolhouse – until now.

I had received a collection of photos from historian and archivist Dennis Lamont that were identified as “Somogyi Aerials.” The belief is that the company was stationed out of the Port Mills Airport.

Anyway, while I was reviewing the set of vintage photographs of old airplanes both in the sky and parked on the ground, one caught my eye.

Right there in the background at the far left is what I’m pretty sure is the old schoolhouse. 

It’s in the right location at the edge of the airfield, and everything corresponds to the newspaper photos –the number of windows, the chimney, the trees close to the building, etc.

It’s a good illustration of why sometimes the things in the background of a vintage photo are more interesting than the actual subject.

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I did a five-part series on this schoolhouse back in 2017. I also wrote about the one on East River Road (here and here), as well as the Brownhelm Township one.