McKay Avenue School, Historic brick school building in downtown Edmonton, Canada.
McKay Avenue School is a three-storey, eight-room school building on McKay Avenue in downtown Edmonton, Alberta, designed by architect Henry Denny Johnson in the Richardsonian Romanesque style and built by contractor R. J. Mason from 1904 to 1905. An original 1880s one-room wooden schoolhouse, with a porch, double doors, eight large windows and 10-foot ceilings, stands beside it.
The original 1881 Edmonton School, a one-room wooden building, was replaced on the same site by architect Henry Denny Johnson's three-storey, eight-room Richardsonian Romanesque design; R. J. Mason built it from 1904, with Lord Minto laying the cornerstone, and it opened on 1 September 1905, the day Alberta joined Confederation. Until the Legislature Building was finished in 1913, the school hosted the first two sessions of the 1st Alberta Legislature in 1906 and 1907, which confirmed Edmonton as capital and founded the University of Alberta. Enrollment fell to 59 and the school closed on 30 June 1983.
The Edmonton Public Schools Archives and Museum occupies the building, holding records and artifacts of the district and running hands-on, curriculum-based programs for students. Its exhibits include a 1950s-period classroom and the restored 1906 legislative assembly room, and in 2019–2020 it hosted a travelling exhibition from the Anne Frank House.
The archives and museum occupy the former school at 10425 99 Avenue; the museum holds a 1950s-period classroom and the restored 1906 legislative assembly room. The separate 1880s wooden schoolhouse next door is used for hands-on education programs. The building reopened to the public in October 2018 after a $2.4 million restoration following flooding in February 2013.
The building is named after Dr. William MacKay, a Hudson's Bay Company physician, but the name on the building is spelled "McKay" rather than "MacKay". The misspelling has been kept since the school opened in 1905.
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