Description of Historic Place

The Charlotte Street School is a two-storey brick and stone Italianate building constructed in 1884 in Fredericton. It is situated on a large parcel of land at 732 Charlotte Street and bounded by Churchill Row to the South.

Heritage Value

The Charlotte Street School is designated as a Protected Provincial Historic Site for its architectural qualities linked to late-19th century urban elementary schools in Canada, and for its association with noted architects H.H. Mott and J.C. Dumaresq.

Built to replace a neighbourhood school housed in a nearby barracks, H.H. Mott and J.C. Dumaresq designed this refined Italianate brick elementary school which was begun in 1884 and completed in 1885 by local contractor Joshua Limerick. It is the oldest primary school building remaining in Fredericton and one of the city’s only Italianate style public buildings. In many ways it is a smaller, more modest architectural version of Dumaresq’s New Brunswick Legislative Assembly Building of the same era. The original T-shaped wing had six classrooms (three on each floor) and a wide double stairway that still dominates the main hallway. In 1917, a rear wing was opened with two classrooms on the main floor, an auditorium on the second floor and washrooms on both levels.

In 2005 the school was restored and renovated, gaining new life as the Charlotte Street Arts Centre - a multi-use cultural facility open to the public.

Source: Province of New Brunswick, Heritage Branch, Historic Places File #129, “Charlotte Street School”.

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements that describe the context of the Charlotte Street School include:
- the setting of the school building on its large school yard, with its formal frontal orientation to the street, and the open schoolyard area at the rear of the building.

The character-defining elements that relate to the exterior materials and symmetrical Italianate design of the building which have survived from the school’s inception include:
- red brick walls punctuated by sandstone lintels;
- several continuous stone beltcourses;
- tall single-hung window openings;
- carved fascia mouldings;
- large chimneys at each side façade;
- the stone foundation walls;
- the original wing capped by a shallow hipped roof with a series of gabled wood pediments and a continuous ornamental dentil row below the eaves;
- the 1917 wing clad in a similar brick as the 1885 wing, with a flat roof above the auditorium;
- the exterior ornamental motifs, including stylized fiddleheads at the rooftop gable pediments, cast iron flower finials at the roof peaks, and the date “1882” carved in raised characters bounded by carved floral designs above the main entrance;
- the four-sided rooftop cupola topped by a bellcast roof and a cast iron finial, each cupola face displaying classically-inspired ornament around a slender arch-top window;
- the picturesque qualities of the Italianate style in an academic application, evident in the school’s use of tall windows (often paired) with both flat- and arch-top shapes, the main entrance door capped with a wide stone arch and arched transom, the subtly stepped front façade with its three bay layout, all carefully designed in conjunction with the sense of a slender verticality throughout;

The character-defining elements that describe the interior of the building include:
- the relatively intact and well-maintained interior spaces including the front vestibule, the hallways and stairwells, classrooms, and auditorium spaces. Many of these spaces exhibit darkly stained hardwood floors, wood wainscoting, painted wood mouldings, and plaster crown mouldings at the ceiling;
- the three main floor classrooms in the original front wing, each possessing a circular metal support column in the centre of the room for structural purposes;
- the unique spatial qualities of the main double staircase with its darkly-stained wood handrails, banisters, treads and median landings;
- the 1917 wing’s pair of staircases with their simply decorated and robust stained wood handrails and banisters;
- the auditorium/gymnasium on the top floor within the rear addition.;
- a number of slate blackboards with wooden chalk rails, all in excellent condition;
- an unerased original blackboard discovered during restoration underneath a newer blackboard slate. The chalk display includes a number of drawings and lists of pupil names from November 1917.