Franklin School
Great Falls’ school district trustees commissioned architects William Donvan and Burt Rhoads to build this Neoclassical Revival style school building in 1910. The new school replaced a smaller 1891 school building three blocks to the east. It boasted eight classrooms on two floors, a central hallway lit by a large fanlight window, central heat, and a full basement. The school mainly served recent European immigrants, many of whom learned to speak English in the school’s classrooms. Throughout the 1910s, the city’s school-aged population grew rapidly, and the school district kept pace with additions and expansions throughout the city. In early 1916, school trustees hired architect George Maurey to design a three-story southern annex. The rusticated stone and buff brick addition faced Second Avenue Southwest and held ten new classrooms and two playrooms. The school’s population continued to grow throughout the 1920s and by 1929, the school added two classrooms in the basement for children of the city’s “landless” Métis and Chippewa Cree Indians. These segregated rooms reportedly offered Indian students instruction in crafts and trades in addition to the regular curriculum. In 1938-39, the school district used federal funds from the Public Works Administration to add east and west wings to the 1916 annex, but Indian children remained segregated. Public outcry protesting unfair treatment eventually succeeded in ending Indian segregation in the schools by 1950. The school closed in 1985 and was converted to apartments in 1989.
Images
