Vienna School Number 1
(Vienna Center)

Vienna School Number 1, also referred to as the Vienna Center School, was established in the fall of 1806, the same year in which Vienna Township was officially organized and recognized by the Trumbull County Commissioners. The school was a sub-district of the Vienna Township Rural School District.

The school building, measuring 20 feet by 26 feet, stood on the northeast corner of Vienna Center. Perhaps this is the building the Connecticut missionary Reverend Thomas Robbins mentioned in his diary. He wrote on March 19, 1805: "The people here [in Vienna] are calculating to build a good framed school-house to use for meetings."[1]

This schoolhouse served the entire township until about 1840. By that time, eight new one-room schoolhouses were being erected around the Township. Three more one-room school buildings were constructed to accommodate the needs of neighboring townships. These schools were called joint district schools and the residents of both townships shared the costs.

When these schools and the Vienna Academy were opened, the old Number 1 School at Vienna Center was removed. Sometime in the mid nineteenth century the Temperance House (later called Hull House) was built in its place on the northeast corner of the center. This left Vienna Village (the term used for Vienna Center) without a schoolhouse. For those students living in Vienna Village, the nearest school was either Vienna School Number 7 at Murray's Corners, about two miles west, or Vienna School Number 8, about one and a half miles north. 

By 1872, a two-story school was erected between the Vienna Academy and the Presbyterian Church on the Vienna Township Green. It was referred to as the Vienna Special School.

Teachers and Administrators

Andrew Bushnell, of Hartford Township, served first as the schoolmaster in this building, followed by James Julius Humason of Vienna.