White School
Las Animas County
Built in 1921 and expanded in 1936 under the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the school exemplifies one-room schools constructed in eastern Las Animas County during the homesteading boom of the 1910s and 1920s. The school addition and its adjacent WPA-constructed barn, intended to store coal and shelter student’s horses, reflect Depression era New Deal efforts to improve rural education facilities in eastern Las Animas County. The WPA constructed new schools and barns for several rural school districts and repaired the facilities of many others. Constructed for a small school district with minimal matching funds, the project typifies WPA efforts to improve education and to help small communities with limited resources.
White School (2006 photograph.)
The buildings are good examples of WPA Rustic design applied to a simple barn and a school addition. The similarity of the stonework of the original building and the addition shows how WPA construction drew strongly on local building traditions. The stonework displays the labor-intensive, hand-craftsmanship associated with the WPA and often referred to as WPA Rustic style. The work crew quarried and finished all the stone. The property is associated with the New Deal Resources on Colorado’s Eastern Plains and Rural School Buildings in Colorado Multiple Property Submissions.