Prairie School Renaissance

Project Summary

School Drawings

Professor Bio

Studio Leader

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Planning Projects

Over the past 15 years, small North Dakota elementary and high schools have responded to declining rural populations by finally closing their doors, aggregating prairie town children to efficient centers of education. Dozens of these schools – sturdy, 100 year old denizens of the prairie – sit empty, beckoning reuse.

With only citizen support and few other resources, engaged residents from the neighboring communities of Bowdon and Sykesdon , North Dakota requested the help of the outreach arm of North Dakota State University 's Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture with moving their projects forward. Bowdon and Sykesdon (schools shown in red on map) are situated at the fringe of North Dakota 's Missouri Coteau and Prairie Pothole Region, a stunning landscape providing the nesting habitat for over 50% of North American ducks and hosting several places dubbed “Globally Significant Bird Areas” by the American Bird Conservancy. Worshipped by hunters and nature enthusiasts, the adjoining coteau landscape contains little infrastructure (hotels, restaurants, gas stations) to retain nature and culture tourists. Representatives from Bowdon and Sykesdon believe that their historic school structures could be reused as infrastructure for regional tourism.

The first step in the process of providing these communities with some proposals for potential reuse is to inventory the existing conditions of the schools and documenting them in architectural record drawings. A grant provided by the State Historic Society sent a professor and several students to the Coteau to make the drawings contained in the "school drawings" link, left. The next step will be to provide these communities with a masterplan for connecting these schools with proximal tourism opportunities as context for redevelopment of the schools to support tourism.

Context of the Bowdon & Sykesdon historic schools

Place based tourism proposals originate from opportunities presented by a combination of natural resources (ususally attractions) with proximal infrasturture and tourism services. The importance of these two schools are not just in their historic significance but also in their proximity to potential tourism connections- and by extension, their potential to contribute to the economic development of their communities. A newly abandoned rail line crosses the North Country Scenic Trail in a globally distinctive environment known for its attraction to birders. The birding opportunities involve visitors driving along designated birding routes (shown in green) until one sees a bird of interest, periodically leaving the car for a better view. Here we see an opportunity to use these schools as a base for both nature based tourism and adventure tourism if the abandoned rail line would be redeveloped to connect Bowdon and Sykesdon to the Chase Lake Birding drive, the developed portion of the North Country Scenic Trail and Lake Audubon at the eastern shore of Lake Sakakawea. Such projects can catalyze economic development in Bowdon, Sykesdon and proximal towns while positively affecting economies across the region- perhaps in communities with other underused or abandoned historic schools (identified with school icons shown in black).