Description of Historic Place

Mount Prospect School, completed in ca. 1884, is a small wood-frame structure now located on a museum site in Cartwright. The municipal designation applies to the one-storey building.

Heritage Value

Mount Prospect School, which originated early in the settlement era, is a fine example of a one-room prairie schoolhouse and one of the oldest of its type remaining in Manitoba. Economically built, but functionally quite serviceable and roomy, the multigrade facility served generations of children in the Mount Prospect area east of Cartwright until district consolidation in the 1960s ended the country school era. Now the unpretentious frame building, with its familiar schoolhouse form and carefully maintained interior, provides a concrete link with that past from its site in a heritage park.

Source: Village of Cartwright By-law No. 130-92, October 19, 1992

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the Mount Prospect School's traditional exterior character include:
- the compact single-storey rectangular form under a steeply pitched gable roof with a centred front entrance porch under a lower saltbox roof
- the functional fenestration featuring tall rectangular sash openings on each side of the classroom area and a small window lighting the porch
- the horizontal wood siding and plain wood trim painted in contrasting light and dark colours, respectively

Key elements that define the school's interior heritage character include:
- the one-classroom plan with an unadorned vestibule
- the wood floor in a natural finish, plastered walls and painted wood trim
- details such as two rows of double wood and metal desks, the tall built-in cabinets of vertical wood panelling, the attached blackboard with a wooden chalk rail, the pot-bellied stove and exposed piping, the exposed chimney, etc.