Located on south side of Ottawa Street between Windermere and Kildare is what is today known as École L’Envolée. It is a french school, and the school board who owns the property, the Conseil scolaire de district du Centre Sud-Ouest, has done a great job with the property. Since this board bought the property, they have done many repairs & renovations, yet all of them are sensitive to the historic look and feel of the old part of the school, which was built in 1914.
The rendering above appeared in the Evening Record in March, 1914:
Plans have been drawn and specifications prepared by Stal, Kinsey & Chapman, architects and engineers, C.K. Motl, associate, for Walkerville’s new 17-room school costing in the neighbourhood of $83,600. The school when completed will be one of the largest and best equipped in the province.
The building is designed for a 17-roomed school but only the portions of 9 rooms will be erected at the present time. This will be 62 feet by 102 feet, and will consist of basement and two stories. At present there will be three principal entrances besides a separate entrance to boiler room. When the wings are added there will be two more entrances.
The nine-roomed building will cost approximately $60,000, which compares quite favourably with the $75,000 recently spent for the erection of an eight-roomed school in Berlin, while the estimated cost of the 17-roomed building is $83,600
A few notes. Berlin is today’s Kitchener. and $83,600 in 1914 dollars is worth about $1.6 million today, and $60,000 is equivalent to $1.15 million.
The building is a beauty, and IMO one of the more under rated buildings in Walkerville.
Agreed. Interesting how older bulidngs can be utilized IF the will is there.
I had the opportunity to work with a couple of the classes at this school in June. The teachers and principal have created a fantastic atmosphere in the place and I’d recommend it to parents. It’s also really impressive the way that the board has preserved the building.
Alas, the board has chosen to build new (Totten Avennue area) for it’s first high school in our community instead of re-using one of the countless empty buildings in the city.
As members of the Parents’ Advisory Council (PAC) for L’Envolee, we were really happy to see the coverage of the school building on International Metropolis. It is a beautiful building and one whose heritage preservation has been treated sensitively. We are working on some further rejuvenation plans, some of which will involve a restoration of the front (Ottawa Street) entrance to the school. The plans also involve major improvements to the schoolyard which is behind the school on the Iroquois Street side: at present it is a concrete jungle.
We’ve made it (from among more than 200 entries country-wide) to the Aviva Community Fund semi-finals in our quest for $175,000 to assist in our plans; the semi-final round is based on community voting between 2 and 15 December 2010. The website is http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf5754. Everyone is eligible to vote for us 10 times over 10 days during the semi-final period. The 10 of 30 semi-finalists with the most votes will progress to the finals where decisions will be made by jury and announced in January 2011. We would be very grateful for all of your support! The revitalised schoolyard will be open to the community and should help in the rejuvenation of Ottawa Street. See also our facebook page created by Chris Holt (www.scaledown.ca) at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=140493445997622.
Thanks,
Anneke Smit
That is where Iwent to school.
That is where I went to school.
This was also Monarch Secondary, wasn’t it? The addition on the west maybe only happened once it was Monarch. It’d be good to have some details on that.
Also a question. What was the Evening Record? Where is it archived?
Hello my name is Andres, I’m a travel and tourism student from St Clair college, the reason of my message is because I’m working on a project about this school , I need more information, I tried to find information about this place at the CHPR (Canadian Register of historic places) but I can’t find anything is there any way I can contact you, maybe an interview or more information about the École L’Envolée / King George School??
I went there when it was Monarch