North Cottage School

One of my favourite things to find is old one room country schoolhouses. At the same time as these rural school districts were forming, larger communities needed larger schools. To quickly alleviate the need for schools, 'cottage schools' were built as temporary measures before more permanent brick schools could be built for the growing school aged population. These cottage schools were designed to fit into residential neighbourhoods with the intention of being converted to a home once it was no longer needed as a school.

I have known about a couple of these in Calgary, which I will have to get photos of, but I recently found one not far from where I work, north of downtown in Red Deer.  North Cottage School was one of 2 identical schools built to accommodate the rapidly growing population of Red Deer. Replacing earlier buildings that were torn town. North Cottage was constructed in 1911 and opened in January of 1912. The larger more permanent school was not built until 1954. The 2nd cottage school, that was on the south side of the river, no longer exists.

Interestingly it was never converted to a home as intended and operates today as an Alternative School. It received a renovation in 1989 to restore it to it's original condition and became a registered Alberta Heritage Building in 2009.

Today

I wanted to capture the same angle but there are huge trees blocking the way now, I guess that tends to happen over 106 years. I love how this building has retained its character.

1912 Courtesy of the Red Deer Archives