Victoria School

Originally named Edmonton High School, the state of the art building was designed to replace the four room school on College Avenue which had been Edmonton's only high school to that point.

Edmonton High School, built at a cost of $150,000, was a two-storey steel, brick, and stone building in a "modern Renaissance" style. Clad in pressed brick and Calgary sandstone, it had a flat roof topped by two 12-foot-square ventilation turrets with copper domed roofs. There were two main entrances, each flanked by Roman Doric columns supporting entablatures and carved pediments. Above each entrance was a carved ornamental shield indicating whether the entrance was intended for "girls" or "boys". It was designed by architect Roalnd W. Lines and built by the Connell and Spencer Construction Company.

The new school had 12 regular classrooms; commercial rooms (for stenography and typing classes); a science suite consisting of chemical and physical laboratories, lecture room, preparation room, dark room, and balance room; classrooms for kitchen and domestic sciences; an auditorium; a library; and the pride of Edmonton's public school system at the time, a fully equipped gymnasium with an 18-foot-ceiling, a basketball court, and dressing rooms with lockers. The floors of the classrooms on the main and second storeys were maple and finsihed in black ash.

Renovations sometime after 1940 saw the removal of the copper domed roofs from the ventilation turrets as well as the spherical decorations topping the pediment.

In 1949, Victoria Composite High School, adjacent to Victoria High School, opened its doors, as the old school alone was no longer adequate to the needs of the growing city. A small modern addition was also built onto the original boys' entrance to connect with the new structure. Classes continued in the old building until its demolition in 1962.