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The fire
A fire in 1893 led Lunenburg to build a much larger school
The county academy was destroyed by fire in 1893. The town wanted a new building that would be an ornament to the town and a credit to the Province. The old academy had housed only 200 students.
1895
The school opened on 7 November 1895 with more than 650 students
The architect Harry H. Mott directed construction, which began in the fall of 1894 and was completed in 1895. It served as a primary and secondary school for Lunenburg County until 1966.
650students admitted when the school opened
The look
A mansard roof and pyramid-capped towers crown Gallows Hill
The three-storey wooden building stands atop Gallows Hill in the Second Empire style, with a mansard roof, Oriel and Venetian windows and towers capped with pyramidal roofs. The central tower houses a large school bell.
“...a sort of Charles Addams nightmare, only white”
Margaret Atwood, on the academy
Boys and girls
With no main foyer, boys and girls could not mix outside class
Two main entrances were for boys and the others for girls, with separate staircases for each. There was no main foyer, so that male and female students could not mix outside of the classrooms.
Now
The school closed in 2012 and now holds a library and a music school
Concerns over maintenance costs led the school board to cede operations to the town in March 2012. The building was designated a National Historic Site in 1983. The Lunenburg Library opened there in 2018.
Day 3, midday
It comes after Old Town Lunenburg. Then Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Lunenburg Academy, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.