An 1896 schoolhouse turned art museum where staff report children's voices and singing
1400 1st Ave N, Great Falls, MT 59401
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Admission to the museum is free; donations accepted. Check the museum website for current hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved approach; multi-floor historic building
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1896 · National Register of Historic Places · First Great Falls High School (1896) · Romanesque Revival architecture
The stone building at 1400 1st Avenue North opened in 1896 as Great Falls High School, the first secondary school in the young Montana city that Paris Gibson had platted in the 1880s. Built in the Romanesque Revival style, it served generations of Great Falls students before the school district outgrew it.
After its years as a school ended, the building was repurposed as a community art center and renamed the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, honoring the businessman and city founder for whom Great Falls' early civic institutions are named. The museum operates today as a regional contemporary-art venue with rotating exhibitions and a permanent collection.
The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Local accounts note that a janitor and his family lived in the attic in the early twentieth century, which is sometimes tied to the museum's resident folklore. Great Falls' tourism office and local museum staff have for years documented reports of unexplained sounds tied to the building's century as a school, while taking care to separate the documented history from the legends.
Sources
The Paris Gibson Square's best-known stories involve children. Staff and visitors have described the sound of unseen children playing in the upstairs halls and faint singing from the former music room, reports that local accounts say have continued for roughly a century. Great Falls' tourism office notes that some staff members have declined to work alone in the building, while others say they have grown used to it.
The most repeated tale concerns a boy said to have drowned in a swimming pool that once occupied the basement when the building was a school. The Great Falls tourism office addresses this directly, writing that the drowning story 'has since been debunked.' The building's age and its old boiler are offered as more plausible explanations for some of the creaks and noises.
A second piece of folklore involves a schoolgirl, described in some accounts as the daughter of the janitor who lived in the attic around World War I, and a young girl reported in the hallways. As with the drowning story, the museum and local sources present these as long-standing legends rather than verified events. The building is a regular feature of Great Falls ghost-story coverage published around Halloween.
Notable Entities
Tour the galleries of a former 1896 high school, now an art museum and National Register building. Staff and visitors have reported the sound of children in the upstairs halls and singing from the old music room.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Dillon, MT
Hotel Meade in Bannack, Montana was constructed in 1875 as the Beaverhead County Courthouse. After Bannack lost the county seat to Dillon in 1881, the building stood vacant until 1890, when it was remodeled into the Hotel Meade. The hotel operated intermittently into the 1940s. Bannack became a Montana state park on August 15, 1954, and the Hotel Meade is preserved as part of the larger ghost-town complex.
North Little Rock, AR
North Little Rock High School's West Campus, originally known as Ole Main, was completed in 1930 and designed by Little Rock architect George R. Mann in an Art-Deco style. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1993, the building hosted high school students until 2015 and now sits largely vacant while the district plans its renovation as a Center of Excellence charter school.
Bisbee, AZ
The Cochise County Courthouse opened August 2, 1931, designed by Tucson architect Roy Place in the Southwest regional variation of Art Deco. The Phelps Dodge Corporation donated the Quality Hill land after the county seat moved from Tombstone to Bisbee in 1929. The building is a contributing property to the Bisbee Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.