Bit by bit, I’ve been donating my vintage catalogs and ephemera from Sears Roebuck to Old Dominion University. In the process of digging through many, many boxes of old specialty catalogs, I discovered this 1926 Sears and Roebuck catalog titled, School Furniture and Supplies.

My 57-year-old husband browsed through the yellowed pages and said, “I remember those desks.” He grew up attending school in a small town in West Virginia. Apparently, they didn’t replace functional items like schoolhouses and schoolhouse equipment as fast as we did here in Hampton Roads.

Recently we returned to West Virginia to visit his family and while there, we were treated to a tour of this old one-room schoolhouse in Arbovale, West Virginia. The small building is currently being restored by Wayne Gillespie (of Arbovale). It’s a beautiful little building!

To learn about Sears Houses, click here.

One-room schoolhouse in Arbovale, WV. When built in the early 1900s, this building probably contained many items from the Sears Schoolhouse catalog!

How many schoolchildren gazed out these windows, pining for the end of the day and longing to go play in these mountains!

An old tablet found in the walls records the last day of school.

Sears Schoolhouse specialty catalog from 1926.

Sears desks

Sears Recitation Desks. Somehow, just hearing the word "recitation" brings back the "wearing nothing but undies to school and being asked to take a pop quiz" nightmare.

Nice oak chairs for the teachers.

And nice water coolers, too.

And nice maps of our 48 states.

And of course, a school bell.

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To contact Rose, write thorntonrose@hotmail.com.

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