Whitpain Public School

The story

Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com

The Whitpain Public School is a school building at 799 Skippack Pike in Blue Bell, Montgomery County, built in 1895 in the Late Victorian, Queen Anne and Gothic styles. Victor H. Baker was its architect, Walter Shaeff Jr. its builder, and it was listed in the National Register in 2006.

Why it's listed

It was listed under criterion C and criteria consideration G, with local-level significance in architecture. Its period of significance is 1895, the year the school was built and dedicated on November 20.

Physical character

The building rests on a fieldstone foundation, with stucco walls, a wood roof, a heptagonal turret topped by a conical cedar-shingle roof, and a Palladian window; original slate chalkboards and yellow pine wainscoting survive inside. The roof and tower shingles were replaced in 1983 and 1987, the stucco was restored in 1988, and windows were modified into exit doors around 1947.

Historical context

This building housed high school grades nine through eleven from 1916 to 1924, before serving as Whitpain Township offices and a police station from 1957 to 1967. It then housed the Whitpain branch of the Wissahickon library from 1967 to 1981, when Whitpain Township bought the building for $500.