The Suwonhyanggyo Local Confucian School was a Confucian school belonging to the Suwon local government. The seat of the local government was relocated towards the end of the eighteenth century and the school was also moved to its current location. When the status of the new town of Suwon was raised with the construction of Hwaseong Fortress, it became an important city in close proximity to Seoul, resulting in the upgrading of the school’s status to one befitting such an important town.
The school’s Daeseongjeon Hall, where sacrificial rites were offered to Confucius and the great Confucian scholars, was rebuilt in 1795, as a 20-kan* structure with two high columns and a truss of seven crossbeams, at the command of King Jeongjo. The transfer of the hyanggyo to its current location and the construction of the new Daeseongjeon Hall are recorded in detail in the Manual on the Construction of Hwaseong Fortress and other documents.
The school’s Daeseongjeon Hall, together with those of Munmyo in Seoul, Najuhyanggyo Local Confucian School, Sangjuhyanggyo Local Confucian School, Jejuhyanggyo Local Confucian School, and Daejeonghyanggyo Local Confucian School, is one of the largest remaining structures of its kind dating from the Joseon period, and is by far the largest in Gyeonggi-do province.
Architectural specialists admire this elegant hall for various reasons, such as the internal spatial structure, the rafter production technique, and the simplified design techniques used in the roof-supporting bracket system. Overall, the structure attests to the advanced building techniques –most particularly the bird wing-shaped brackets used to support the eaves– of the architectural engineers of state-run organizations of the late Joseon period. It is also regarded as an important building regarding studies on technological changes in the country’s history of architecture, as the carpenters who worked on the building have been identified and it is possible to analyze the interconnectivity between the construction techniques, building structures, and other details by comparing it with other structures built by them.