Old School B&Bs
By Sam Lowe

There was a time when sleeping in class was a social taboo, discouraged by teachers and frowned upon by elders. But today, nodding off in the schoolhouse is not only acceptable, it's encouraged. And the snoozers who once got their knuckles rapped are welcomed with open arms and soft pillows.

That's how it is in Globe and Bisbee, where two well-aged schoolhouses have been given new lives as lodging establishments.

The Noftsger Hill Inn has looked down on Globe for a century. It began serving the community as a school in 1907, educating the children of the miners who settled there to dig for gold, silver and copper. It was shut down in 1981, then sat vacant for a decade until Pam and Frank Hulme bought it and began the conversion into a bed and breakfast. After a decade of hard work, they sold the building to Rosalie and Dom Ayala.

The new owners have finished the project, and it's one of the more interesting sleepovers in the state because it still feels like a school, with wide staircases, transoms above the doors and tall windows. There are only six guest rooms but five of them are former classrooms, so they're huge because they once held as many as 45 young gum-chewers, note-passers and nap-grabbers.

The blackboards still hang on the walls, now covered with chalk-scribbled comments from guests, many of them former students. And the coat closets that occasionally doubled as detention centers have been converted into bathrooms.

The sixth room, once the janitor's closet, is now a cowboy suite for youngsters, and the massive hallways are decked with period furniture. A reading lesson stands on an easel, a checker board waits for players, old class photos decorate the walls, and guests eat a home-cooked breakfast in a room that once housed administrative offices.

And there's no extra homework for sleeping late and missing the first bell.
The School House Inn, a historic brick structure, was built in 1918 at the peak of Bisbee's mining era. During those boom times, the city boasted 25,000 residents and 15 schools, strategically located at half-mile intervals so the children wouldn't have to walk long distances to get educated.

The Garfield School (as it was known then) served grades one through four in four large classrooms, all on the second floor above the boiler room and storage areas. But its tenure as an educational institution was short-lived. It closed in 1935 and the classrooms were converted into apartments.

The building's rebirth as a bed and breakfast occurred in 1989 when Mark and Shirl Negus took out some of the apartments and gave it the current name. They ran the operation for five years before selling it to Jeff and Bobby Blankenbeckler. The current owners, John Lambert and Paula Roth, acquired it in 2006.

The inn has six rooms and three suites, all on the second floor. (The old boiler is still on the first floor, no longer in use but too heavy to move). Some suites consist of two smaller rooms so they can accommodate families. Each unit has a designation written on the glass transom above the door, like the Reading Room, Writing Room and Arithmetic Room.

The décor varies but there's an old-fashioned sense of comfort and security in each room. Teddy bears, old textbooks, and even the building's original blueprints are prominently displayed to further enhance the feeling.

The downstairs is devoted to a large sitting room and the kitchen where the owners whip up pancakes, eggs, french toast and quiche. When the weather is compatible with outdoor dining, guests can eat under a huge oak tree that was planted more than 90 years ago and now spreads its branches over the entire courtyard.

Photos courtesy of Sam Lowe

School House Inn
818 Tombstone Canyon, Bisbee
520-432-2996; 800-537-4333
www.schoolhouseinnbb.com
Rates and restrictions:
$79 to $129 per night, double occupancy
No smoking, no pets, no children under 10.