Description of Historic Place

Lakecrest Independent School is a three storey concrete institutional building located at 58 Patrick Street, St. John's, NL. This building sits as part of a group of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical buildings, including nationally recognized St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, and municipally designated St. Patrick's Convent and The Deanery. The designation is confined to the footprint of the building.

Heritage Value

This building has been designated a Municipal Heritage Structure for its aesthetic, environmental and historic values.

058 Patrick Street is aesthetically valuable because it is a good example of institutional construction with gothic revival elements. Built of brick and concrete, this building is laid out much like any school, with a regular fenestration of windows. It is three stories high and has a central passage way for pedestrian traffic. This passage is decorated with two gothic pointed arches. The building has banded stringcourses delineating each floor and concrete pilasters which span all three floors.

058 Patrick Street is environmentally valuable because it sits next to St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, a provincially designated heritage building, and it sits in close relation to St. Patrick’s Convent and school, also municipally designated buildings. This grouping of ecclesiastical buildings was typical for St. John’s when schools were run, largely, by different denominations within the province.

058 Patrick Street is historically valuable because it was constructed in the 1950s as a catholic girl’s school, and it remains so today in the form of a private school. Originally, 058 Patrick Street was called St. Patrick's Girl School. It was a Catholic school operated by the Presentation Sisters within St. Patrick's Church parish. The first St. Patrick's Girls School was built in 1856 and was one of the first schools located in the Riverhead area of the city. This structure was the third constructed under this name. In its last years of operation it was a co-ed junior high school. It closed in 1999 and Lakecrest Independent School purchased the building in 2002.

Source: City of St. John's Archives, unnumbered property file, St. John's - Lakecrest Independent School

Character-Defining Elements

All those elements that define the building's 1950s stone design including:
-the concrete facade of the building;
-double arched gothic revival passageway;
-projected centre section of the front facade;
-three storey pilasters;
-cross in the centre of the front facade eave line;
-eaves bracketing; and,
-size, massing and dimensions of building.