Lakeside Elementary (1893)

4628 Pitt Street | Unknown | Built: 1893 | Closed: 1993

The first school building in the Village of Lakeside was named London School, a nod to the community’s origins as the townof New London. The town was originally owned by Hugh McCullugh, an agent of Jay Cooke’s who never once visited what is now Duluth. He platted the town from his office in London, England, naming streets and public squares for London landmarks, Cooke, and himself.

London school was built in 1889 on the northeast corner of Regent Street and Forty-Sixth Avenue East, a simple, wood-framed structre with five rooms designed to serve 112 students. Its students transfered to Lakeside Elementary in 1893, afterwhich Bradford C. Church purchased the school, dismantled it, and reconstructed it at 5217 London Road as a private home; it stands there today.

The 1893 school, also designed by German DeWaard, was a simple two-story Rennaiscance Revival building faced in brick and trimmed with brownstone. Each floor originally held four classrooms, which jutted out at the corners like wings, and a central room which held an office on the first floor and a library on the second. Outside of an arched entryway surrounded by carvings and two cirular windows, some checkerboard brickwork atop the second floor, and heavy quoins defining the building’s first-floor and basement-level corners, the structure is otherwise unadorned. Teachers and students alike used an outhouse until plumbing was installed in 1900.

Two additions have been made to the building over the years; the first matched the 1893 design while the second was rather thoughtlessly tacked on, likely due to budget constraints. St. Michael’s Catholic Church purchased the building in 1993 to use as a school.

Lakeside Elementary School, 2015. (Image: Zenith City Press)