Quintessential Pennsylvania

As I have been going through old flickr albums that are providing the material for this blog, I come across various buildings and subjects that I didn't know much about when I took the photo, but now have an opportunity to learn more and obviously write about.  Such is the case with the former Washington Terminal Station for the Waynesburg and Washington Railroad.  The former Washington Terminal of the Waynesburg and Washington Railroad. I took photos of the former railroad station on a July 4th explore trip into Washington County.  On my blog entry describing the trip, I had posted about the abandoned building that appeared to be a railroad terminal.  Fortunately, I had a few comments that informed me that the building was the former Washington station for the Waynesburg and Washington Railroad (W&WRR). So now seven years later, I did some additional research and learned a lot about the history of this station and the railroad it once served. 1895 Railroad Map of W

The one room schoolhouse was a key part of rural life for much of Pennsylvania and America in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Their are many in various shapes of repair throughout rural Pennsylvania.  One is the Archer No. 1 school house in Morris Township in Washington County. The school house appears to have been built around 1900 .  It currently sits within Morris Township Community Park in Prosperity. When I took these photos in July 2009, the building needed a little TLC.  Some more recent photos I have found online show that the schoolhouse has received a fresh coat of paint and additional upkeep. A nice feature of the Archer schoolhouse is that the original bell and bell tower remain.  You can understand why it may be easy to confuse these with small rural churches from the same era.