Welland’s old Aqueduct Street School once used to train soldiers

Once a part of Welland’s early education system, the former Aqueduct Street School was a mostly overlooked relic that hailed back to the city’s earliest years.

The original Aqueduct Street School was briefly known as North School. It was built in 1862 on land purchased from Elijah Shotwell in 1858 on the east corner of what would be Aqueduct and Smith streets.

It accommodated elementary-level students from the north side of the Welland River in the city’s steadily expanding community, which outgrew the available number of schools at the time. The original structure was a one-room brick schoolhouse, and was one of three schools that constituted Welland’s first Union Grammar and Common School Board in 1866, along with South School at Main and Hellems and Bald Street Grammar School, with J.