Vanishing Schools, Threatened Communities

Paul W Bennett

From the 1780s until today, the school has served as the social anchor for most communities, from the smallest village to the most populous urban neighbourhood.3 Since the mid- nineteenth century and the advent of the “common” tax-supported school system, schoolhouses have also been a contested terrain — a place where shared community values were forged, tested, and either sustained or lost. [...] From the time of Confederation until the 1890s, school buildings in Halifax were modelled after the British grammar school and reflected the gothic revival style of architecture. [...] Modern school architecture emerged after 1870 in the form of the so-called “palace school,” with Victorian style and grace, but incorporating the latest advances in lighting, heating, and washroom facilities.18 Four of these impressive two-storey brick palace schoolhouses still survive today in Halifax, the original Halifax High School/Academy, the Tower Road School, the Russell Street School, and [...] In 1972, pei adopted a new school act that resulted, over time, in the dissolution of many little community school boards, the establishment of five regional boards, and the consolidation of most of the one- and two-room schools.20. [...] A fascinating 2002 survey of Boston public schools in Doris Cole and Nick Wheeler’s School Treasures: Architecture of Historic Boston Schools reveals that thirty-two of 118 schools (27.1 percent) still in service were built before the end of the First World War (1919) and seventy-eight schools (66.1 percent) were erected before the Second World War (1939).24 In the case of the Halifax Regional Sch