Corunna Public Schools/Shiawassee Street School
The Corunna School District was organized in 1842. Later that year a one-story frame schoolhouse was constructed. A teacher, Miss Cook, was hired in 1843 and received the “unprecedented salary of $2.50 per week” and the “privilege of boarding ‘round” in the community. In 1851 a two-story brick school was built to accommodate Corunna’s growing population. A larger, three-story brick school was erected in 1866 just north of the schoolhouse. In the fall of 1882 both buildings burned. Another three-story brick school was constructed later that year to serve grades kindergarten through twelve. On April 14, 1908, that school burned.
The present school was built that same year with funds from insurance policies and a city bond issue. Edwyn A. Bowd of Lansing, an architect popular in the early twentieth century for his plans of public buildings, designed the Shiawassee Street School, which opened in January 1909. Rickman and Son, who built the Shiawassee County Courthouse in 1903-04, constructed this school at a cost of thirty-one thousand dollars.
The Georgian Revival-style school is trimmed in limestone. The bell in the cupola was cast in 1882 and donated by the Corunna Presbyterian Church upon the school’s completion. The building served as an elementary school between 1952 and 1976, when it became the home of community education courses and the Corunna Public Schools administrative offices. This was the fifth school built on this site since 1842.
site number: L1514B
era: Statehood Era (1815-1860)
year listed: 1988
year erected: 1989
