Carlson Elementary School - Idaho Springs CO

City:: Idaho Springs, CO
Site Type:: Education and Health, Schools
New Deal Agencies:: Public Works Funding, Public Works Administration (PWA)
Started:: 1937
Completed:: 1937
Designers:: Earl Chester Morris, Frank W. Frewen
Quality of Information:: Good
Marked:: No
Site Survival:: Extant

Description

The Public Works Administration (PWA) provided a grant of $49,090 for a new high school for the town of Idaho Springs, Colorado. Total cost of the school, which was constructed in 1937, was $109,885.

The school is a 2-story brick Moderne building, with two wings and distinctive horizontal window lines on the central portion of the building. Near the entrance are glass bricks of the kind popular in the late 1930s and 1940s.

The cornerstone gives no information on who built the school, just the name and date. A cornerstone from a previous high school is laid against the wall below the present cornerstone.

Idaho Springs High School is now the Carlson Elementary School and very much still in use. The school is part of the Clear Creek School District.

It appears to be in excellent condition and a look through the (closed) front doors showed that the original lobby, with its Art Deco curves, is still intact.

The 1937 Idaho Springs High School building was designed by Frank W. Frewen and Earl Chester Morris of Denver, Colorado.

Source notes

Record Group 135: Public Works Administration; Projects Control Division; Entry 52: Indices to Non-Federal Projects; Report No. 5: Status of All Completed Non-Federal Allotted Projects, page 162.

Cornerstone.

Pencil Points, Volume XIX Number 6, June, 1938.

Site originally submitted by Richard Walker on August 7, 2022.
Additional contributions by Joan Greer, Shannon Stanbro.