President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal – a series of projects and programs instituted in the United States between 1933 and 1938 – was responsible for the construction of 139 schools, gymnasiums, and athletic fields in Eastern Kentucky. That is just in one part of Kentucky. Nearly all of our 120 counties once had a school building or gym constructed by one of the New Deal programs. The most familiar, of course, is the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and I’ve written about several Kentucky WPA schools in my WPA Builds series. There were three public WPA schools built in Rowan County, but only the Farmers School remains intact.*
A circa 1938-1939 image of the Farmers School in Rowan County, Kentucky. Image from the Goodman Paxton Collection at the University of Kentucky, https://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/xt7nvx05xv47_4205_1
Farmers, Kentucky, is purportedly the first European settlement in what would become Rowan County. It is located about five miles southwest of the county seat of Morehead, at the crossroads of two important trails, including one that is better known now as US Highway 60. A post office, by the name of Farmers, was established in 1849. The community has gone by several names: Farmer’s Cross Roads, The Cross Roads, and Confederate Cross Roads. The name that stuck, Farmers, became official in 1882. The crossroads soon occupied a prime site not just on a major turnpike road, but also on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad.
Farmers, Kentucky, as shown on the 1929 15-minute Salt Lick topographic map.
I’m not sure when the first school opened in Farmers, but there were, according to the late historian Dr. Jack D. Ellis (former Dean of the Library of Morehead State University) at least three generations of school buildings at Farmers. The first two generations were most likely one-story frame buildings, with one or two rooms.
Farmers School in the 1920s. Image from Rowan County, Kentucky Illustrated History, 2001.
Rural school consolidation in Kentucky began prior to the Great Depression, but many counties struggled to house students, maintain the buildings, and retain teachers. Some students learned in poorly heated log buildings that had little in the way of amenities. During the Great Depression, students actually able to attend school were often hungry and tired, not to mention likely demoralized by parents struggling to find work and take care of their families.
The WPA, while seeking to return unemployed workers to the workforce, reshaped the Kentucky landscape, with the construction of 310 new school buildings. And in 1938, with stone from local quarries, the new WPA school at Farmers opened its doors.
Datestone above the entry door at Farmers School.
When the sun hits the stone walls of the Farmers School, a beautiful, soft glow results. The cut stone and neat mortar joints speak eloquently of the skill of the men who quarried, cut, and dressed the materials. Each of the Rowan County WPA (Haldeman and Elliottville are the other two) received schools of similar design and layout.
The classroom section of the Farmers School, looking northwest. Photo October 2020.
Each of the schools was around 168 feet long, and 101 feet wide. The basic form of the Farmers School is a two-story gymnasium at one end, and a one-story,15-bay wide classroom wing at the other end. There were approximately six classrooms when first constructed, with enormous wooden 12/12 double-hung sash windows to bring natural light into the interior. The Farmers School faces south, so the classrooms would have been well illuminated during the school day.
Some of the original 12/12 windows. Photo October 2020.
The Elliottville School sat on a raised basement; the Farmers School may have a basement, but it is built at grade on the south side and does not feature any basement lights like the former school.
Farmers School, looking northeast. Photo October 2020.
The Farmers School housed grades 1-8 as well as the high school when first built. Construction of the three WPA schools in Rowan County cost $145,000, and federal funds covered $100,000 of the expense.
A WPA workers sands the wood floors at Farmers School, circa 1938. Image from the Goodman Paxton Collection at the University of Kentucky, https://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/xt7nvx05xv47_4206_1
Stone schools, built to last – showcasing native materials, with a welcoming and practical design (because these weren’t just schools, they were community hubs), and scaled appropriately for their users – would that our schools today exhibited any of the same ideals or principles of design! The proponents of the New Deal believed that schools were “important to the educational, social, and cultural life of the entire community.”**
The gymnasium at Farmers School, located at the east end of the building.
Interior of the gym, showing original wooden bleachers and an interior doorway with transom. Photo October 2020.
The classroom wing looks like it originally had a hip on gable roof, with the western end of the building (five bays) projecting slightly from the facade. I didn’t examine it very closely, but it appears that section has been altered and perhaps rebuilt.
Farmers School, circa 1938-1939, looking northwest. Image from the Goodman Paxton Collection at the University of Kentucky, https://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/xt7nvx05xv47_4204_1
There were three main doors on the facade – a pedimented entry with double doors in the classroom wing, and two doors on either end of the south elevation of the gymnasium.
Entry into the classroom wing. Photo October 2020.
In 2015, the former Farmers School housed an antique store. When I photographed the building in October 2020, during the Pandemic, it did not appear to be open, and the building showed signs of deferred maintenance.
These substantial buildings are such an important part of Kentucky history, and could be (and have been) adaptively reused for many purposes. I think of the popularity of Cave Run Lake, and hiking opportunities like the Sheltowee Trace Trail – and how awesome it would be for tourists to stay in a building with real links to the region. Would it take substantial investment? Of course – but historic tax credits could help defray restoration costs. The loss of these buildings says a great deal about our values as a society and our consumer culture.
*The Haldeman School burned at some point, and between 2016 and 2023, the classroom wing of the Elliottville School has been torn down, and only the gymnasium remains standing.
**Rachel Kennedy and Cynthia Johnson. The New Deal Builds: A Historic Context of the New Deal in East Kentucky, 1933 to 1943. (Frankfort, Kentucky: the Kentucky Heritage Council, 2005), 128.
