Jasper School Addition – Jasper MN

Description

Here’s the summary I wrote for the Docomomo US MN listing on our registry, heavily borrowing from the application linked below:

Original section built in 1911 (designed by W.E.E. Greene of Luverne; Builder: Boyd Construction Co.; cost: $30,000), four additions in 1939, 1956, 1960, and 1965; the richness and beauty of the rose-colored Sioux quartzite stone itself (also called Jasper stone) provides the visual character of the building, laid in broken ashlar; the substantial, Moderne-style 1939 addition (designed by Perkins & McWayne of Sioux Falls; Cost: $125,000, with $45,135 in New Deal funds via the Public Works Administration) on the south of the structure added an auditorium-gymnasium as well as extra classrooms in the same stone, and gives the building a dominant street presence on the south side; the single-story mid-century style 1956 ag classroom/band room (designed by Harold Spitznagel Associates of Sioux Falls; Cost: $45,000) is built to the east of the original 1911 section, with an enclosed corridor consisting of steel frame, flat roof, linear form, and steel-frame windows with plate glass and operable awnings: while construction is with concrete block and steel truss, it continues faced in the same Sioux quartzite for visual continuity; the 1960 agricultural workshop addition connects to the north side of the ‘56 addition, and continues both the style of the ’56 addition with the Sioux quartzite facing; the 1965 addition is a two-story, L-shaped wing built to the north of the 1911 section, is a purely functional concrete block and truss building that does not continue the Sioux quartzite facing in exchange for buff colored brick; in service 1911–2001; listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 17, 2019 for its use of Sioux Quartzite across different architectural styles.