Just Another Brick In The Wall

My recent "discovery" of Georgetown only happened because I went to Redding looking for this: the Umpawaug School, built c. 1789. I saw a perfectly good picture of it somewhere and decided I had to go take another - probably nearly identical - picture of it myself.

Redding does not, as you might suppose, consist entirely of enormous houses on extremely hilly roads beside steel-grey brooks and tiny waterfalls. Most of it is like that, but there's also a little central area with a few perfect white municipal buildings. And there's the Umpawaug School.

The website History of Redding says:

Umpawaug, the name of the district in which the school house is located, had the distinctive honor of being the only school in town made of brick. When people use brick, look for the reason. There was a brick kiln in Topstone and the sagacious promoters-Burrs, Sanfords, Starrs, Barlows, Meekers, Coleys, used the handy and enduring bricks.

For some reason, the line "when people use brick, look for the reason" makes me as happy as finding a little rural schoolhouse by the side of the road on a cold day.