Two-room school

A two-room schoolhouse is a larger version of the one-room schoolhouse, with many of the same characteristics, providing the facility for primary and secondary education in a small community or rural area. While providing the same function as a contemporary primary school or secondary school building, a small multi-room school house is more similar to a one-room schoolhouse, both being architecturally very simple structures. While once very common in rural areas of many countries, one and two-room schools have largely been replaced although some are still operating. Having a second classroom allowed for two teachers to operate at the school, serving a larger number of schoolchildren and/or more grade levels. Architecturally, they could be slightly more complex, but were still usually very simple. In some areas, a two-room school indicated the village or town was more prosperous.

A 1909 school planning guide from New Mexico suggests a school room be no bigger than 24 by 30 feet (7.3 m × 9.1 m) which would seat up to 40 students, as "a teacher having charge of more than this number cannot do satisfactory work - especially in a rural school". The width was also the limit of acceptable daylighting from windows on the opposite wall. The guide recommended a vestibule between the entrance and the classrooms to separate the outdoor climate from the classrooms. Coatrooms off the vestibule allowed a place for wet clothes to dry while keeping their "disagreeable offensive odors" out of the classrooms.

North Carolina issued a guide in 1914 with a floorplan of a similar two-room school with the same layout of a front entrance into a vestibule, two coatrooms off the vestibule, and a large room divided by a moveable wall into two 26 ft × 32 ft (7.9 m × 9.8 m) classrooms.

Oklahoma presented a similar design in 1913 for a 23 ft × 30 ft (7.0 m × 9.1 m) one-room school house and a 46 ft × 30 ft (14.0 m × 9.1 m) two-room school, again with a movable wall between the two classrooms. These dimensions do not include the shared vestibule and coat rooms.

A 1916 bulletin issued by the Oregon school superintendent included plans for six different variations of a two-room school house prepared by the Oregon chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the architecture departments of the University of Oregon and Oregon Agricultural College. One plan also featured two similarly sized classrooms, vestibule, coat rooms and the added amenities of an enclosed porch and a 88 sq ft (8.2 m²) library in the front and a wood shed attached to the back with a wood-fired heater for each classroom.

South Carolina noted that school districts in the state that used a standard design from its bulletin, prepared by Clemson Agricultural College, would receive one-half of the construction cost from the state and county. South Carolina recommended one-room schools only if "after careful consideration, and after all efforts to maintain a two-room, two-teacher school have failed.

Instead of adjacent classrooms, a California two-room school plan separates the rooms with long hallway, with the vestibule, coatrooms, a library and teacher's office between the classrooms. A rear projection includes toilets and lab/shop spaces.

A Minnesota design for rural schools gives special attention to minimizing heating duct length to a basement furnace with a compact design with the classroom, library, vestibule, and coatroom clustered together. This one-room school can be expanded to two rooms by mirroring the entire building. The two room school affords for indoor toilets as the "second" library space can be used for a girls' toilet room (a boys' toilet would go under the entrance stairs).