The oldest standing school in Newark has recently been restored.  Visitors can learn about the history of the building and about school days long ago from the newly installed interactive labels.  See a map of the school's first site, examine a photograph of children posing proudly in front of the school a century ago, and learn about the first schoolmaster, a Princeton graduate named John Lyon who earned only $12.00 a month!  Open the time-capsule label to see the items that were placed in the actual capsule in 1938, including a 19th century report card and a note to the future from a Newark student.

The 1784 Old Stone Schoolhouse was moved to the Newark Museum's Alice and Leonard Dreyfuss Memorial Garden in 1938 as a WPA project during the Great Depression.

On its original site at the corner of Elizabeth & Chancellor Avenues, the one-room school hosted generations of school children from the area between 1784 and the early 20th century.  Lessons included arithmetic, English, history and science, with all grades together in the same room.

Details in the building bring the past to life: the sandstone foundation built with stone from a local Newark quarry; the floorboards sawed by hand from trees cut from a local forest; and the old cast iron stove used to heat the school with wood provided by the students.  See the teacher's original classroom management tool—a real dunce cap.

Special programs for school groups are available to offer the opportunity to learn about school days in the 18th and 19th centuries.