The fight to save Vancouver’s little 1912 schoolhouse

A little yellow schoolhouse at the corner of Cornwall Avenue and Maple Street that has been a fixture of Kitsilano since 1912 may not be around much longer.

The Vancouver School Board is replacing Henry Hudson Elementary School, a larger structure on the eastern end of the same block as the yellow schoolhouse, as part of a provincial program for seismic upgrading of schools.

A new Henry Hudson is being constructed at the western end of the site, and the little yellow schoolhouse is located at the future entrance to the school parking lot.

The school board looked at ways to retain the yellow schoolhouse, which is currently being used as a pre-school and out-of-school care facility. It was originally a “manual training” school, which was 1912-speak for a vocational school.

To the naked eye, the schoolhouse looks fine, but the school board said in an email it is “in extremely poor condition, and has poor energy performance and outdated systems that would be cost prohibitive for the district to update or maintain.”