Someday soon, St. Albert's Little White School will once again be white.
Restoration of the historic building's exterior is scheduled for completion in time for the opening of the nearby Founders' Walk on July 24.
The building on Seven Hills is still surrounded by scaffolding and chain link fence but workers have accomplished a lot since work began late last summer, said Ann Ramsden, director of heritage for St. Albert's Arts and Heritage Foundation (AHF.)
"At this point it looks as though there's a huge amount of work that's still to be done on the school but a lot of the hard work has already been done," Ramsden said. "It should come together very quickly in the next three to four weeks."
The foundation has been excavated and damp-proofed to combat the moisture problems that had been plaguing the 63-year-old building, she said. What's left is restoring the wooden windows, repairing the stucco that had to be removed and applying paint, which will be the brilliant white that so many people remember rather than beige-ish hue that's now in place.
The building is designated as a municipal historic resource so AHF has taken great care to make the restoration as authentic as possible, she said.
The school was built in 1946 during a wave of building that followed the Second World War, Ramsden said. That wave saw many such schools pop up across the province but few survived the test of time.
"They became obsolete fairly quickly as larger schools were built," she said. "This school was used as a parish kindergarten up until the 1980s so it survived … it's actually much rarer than it looks."
The roof got new shingles in 2009.
The restoration project is budgeted to cost about $360,000 with funding coming from various government sources and fundraising by the AHF.
Old and new together
In conjunction with the restoration work is an addition that will make the building fully wheelchair accessible, built at the back so it doesn't detract from the landmark's original façade, said architect David Murray.
It will also have modern windows and a different coloured stucco so it's distinct from the original building. This is in keeping with the accepted guidelines for the conservation of historic places.
"One of the principles is when you make an addition or an alteration to an historic building you make it distinguishable and of its own time so there's no confusion as to what's original and what's new," Murray said.
"The word we use is authenticity," he continued. "Everything we do is maintaining the authenticity of the site."
A $278,000 second phase will include interior renovations and the addition of an elevator to make the building fully accessible. Fundraising continues for the second phase.
