Why Red?

The Little Red Schoolhouse: Why?
You find countless references to the Little Red Schoolhouse as preserved museums, in history, literature and lore. A web search of Little Red Schoolhouse yields hundreds of photos of little red schoolhouses.  The reference is vivid, conjuring our image of what people imagine as the typical one-room school.

However, we know that country schools were built of logs, brick, stone, wooden clapboard, adobe and sod,  painted white, yellow, green, blue or often left unpainted. The question may be asked....why were so many painted red?

​One interesting explanation came to us as a reply to our YouTube video, "One-Room Schools of the Past." The writer commented: 
 "A lot of schools were red in color for the same reason a lot of barns were red: because the railway companies would carry their own red paint to paint the cars, signs and cabooses of the trains on the rails across North America. The trains would carry so much of this "Red Lead" (lead oxide) paint that it was not only cheap, but readily available all along the railways (other paints were not so cheap or available). In the 1800s, "white paint" was mostly lime, chalk and water (whitewash), that would last a year at best on exterior surfaces. The other alternative was white paint made from white lead (lead carbonate) and boiled linseed oil, which was more expensive and less available than the railroad's red lead paint.  From-Ronray.com ( site no longer available)

Another informative answer to the question comes from a book entitled, "Requiem for the Little Red Schoolhouse,"                        by Gerald J. Stout. I quote the passages below in the hope that you scout out an edition of his 1987 paperback that is rich in information about the country schoolhouse experience. The book was published by Athol Press.

“Why red? The original pioneer schools, those which were built of hewn logs with cracks plastered with clay, were not painted at all... It was not until men began building houses, barns and schoolhouses of sawed boards, most commonly placed vertically and the joints covered with battens, that they began painting them to give color and protect wood from the ravages of time.

Most old-timers of northeastern United States remember from their grandfathers that little red schoolhouses were as common as red barns, at least wherever they chose to paint them at all. Yet by my time, our Evans School was painted white as was the nearby school, White Dove, where my mother went to school back in the 1880's. The red schoolhouse era must go back to about Civil War time or shortly after log buildings were phased out and sawed weatherboard siding came into vogue.

We have no direct evidence about the red color other than what took place with respect to farm barns, especially in eastern Pennsylvania. In that region the red barn is still common, even on modern farms where board fences and homes, unless made of brick are almost always painted white. In early days there was no scarcity of iron ore even in quite early days and relics of old iron furnaces are preserved in many places of Pennsylvania.
 
When iron ore- or iron oxide- was ground fine, it could be used as pigment generally called venetian red. This was the inexpensive red coloring used in barn paint. One "vehicle" (liquid) into which iron oxide pigment was mixed was none other than buttermilk. The casein served in the same way it does in so-called water based paints of today. 
Eventually the United States obtained its own lead supply (rather than importing it) and the price dropped accordingly so white lead (lead oxide) could be used for painting the Cape Cod cottages of New England and farmhouses elsewhere. The most logical reason to explain why in later years schoolhouses came to be painted white rather than red, after white paint became cheap, is the idea that a schoolhouse should be painted like a house- it didn't seem quite right to paint a school like a barn."
.....Gerald Stout
​
NOTE: This article is a reprint from our original CSAA newsletter, but with added commentary. Stout's book is nearly impossible to find on-line anymore. Let us know if you get lucky!

---