The school building was built in 1857 by the utopian community of Modern Times and was originally a small, one story, frame octagonal building sheathed in board and batten siding and surmounted by a hipped roof with octagonal cupola.

It was converted for residential use in 1907 to make room for a larger schoolhouse and was moved to its present site in 1989.

[2] The building is one of the few surviving structures of the village of Modern Times, which was founded by reformers Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews as an experimental community in the nineteenth century.

The village based itself on individual freedom and was known for its lack of jail, police, judge or money.

[5] Media related to Modern Times School (Brentwood, New York) at Wikimedia Commons