About the Project
Who’s Behind This
The West Street School restoration is a project of the Southington Historical Society — an all-volunteer, membership-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has been preserving Southington history for 60 years.
The Project
A Project of the Southington Historical Society
The campaign to restore the West Street School is organized by the Southington Historical Society, Inc. — an all-volunteer, membership-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 06-6080963). Founded in 1965, the Society has spent 60 years collecting, protecting, and telling the history of Southington, Connecticut.
Rallying around this schoolhouse is not a new idea. The West Street School Association — the farm families and former pupils who reunited at the school through the 1930s — kept the building alive for an earlier generation. Today’s restoration effort picks up where they left off.
An independent record of the Society's nonprofit status is public: Verify our 501(c)(3) status on ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer(opens in a new tab)
The Society
The Southington Historical Society
The Society is based at the Southington Historical Center, 239 Main Street — the town’s former 1902 library building, and the Society’s home since 1974. Alongside the West Street School, the Society also stewards the Old South End Schoolhouse (c. 1810).
- Home
- Southington Historical Center, 239 Main Street — the town’s former 1902 library
- Open
- Wednesdays, 5–7 p.m.
- Phone
- (860) 621-4811
- President
- Philip K. Wooding, who also serves as Southington’s official Town Historian
- Also in the Society’s care
- The Old South End Schoolhouse (c. 1810)
On the Record
The Building, on the Record
Ownership
Owned by the Town of Southington, held under a 99-year lease arranged in 1947
National Register of Historic Places
Listed December 1, 1988 · #88002689
Oldest in Town
Southington’s oldest surviving school building — it taught from 1750 to 1945
Why Now
Why This Campaign
The schoolhouse needs restoration — peeling paint, weathered clapboards, rotted shed doors. And Southington already knows what happens when a town waits: St. Thomas Church, built in 1865, stood for generations on Bristol Street. In 2025 it was demolished.
The West Street School doesn’t have to share that fate. The restoration plan lays out exactly what the building needs.
Membership & More
Join the Society
Membership, the Society’s collections, and its broader work across Southington live at southingtonhistory.org. This site is dedicated to one thing: the effort to restore the West Street School.
Now It’s Our Turn
Help the Southington Historical Society restore the West Street School for the next generation.