Maxwell Park School
Chaffee County
Constructed 1912 by the Mount Princeton School District, the Maxwell Park School served as the district’s only facility in an area southwest of Buena Vista for more than two decades. As such the building exemplifies the importance Maxwell Park area farmers and ranchers saw in securing public education for their children, as they created and administered a school district and planned the construction of this building. Additionally, as a venue where people could congregate the Maxwell Park School is important to the area for how it facilitated the social life of rural residents, serving as a gathering place for a variety of community functions.
Along with these important social aspects, the school is important architecturally as an excellent example of a one-room rural schoolhouse. Furthermore, it is significant for its construction method of ornamental concrete block. During the early decades of the twentieth century, techniques for the onsite or local production of concrete blocks using hand-operated metal machines were developed by various manufacturers. Companies claimed a possible daily output of three hundred blocks per laborer using a manually operated concrete block machine. The blocks saw their most widespread use in the first two decades of the century before declining by 1940.
Maxwell Park School, 5CF.733