This photograph shows Strand Boarding School in 1905, prior to the later additions and extensions. It was a relatively small house, spread over 1½ storeys and an area of 11 x 10 metres. It was built in the national timber style typical of its time, characterized by Østlandet timber building traditions. The school was built as a chapel to begin with. Such school chapels, incorporating a classroom that served as church nave for the congregation and where an ancillary room was the chancel, was an economical solution in reduced circumstances that had been used in sparsely-populated settlements in Østlandet and Trøndelag since the nineteenth century.

At Strand, the church section occupied over half of the ground floor, but most of that was a classroom that could be separated from the chancel by means of a folding door. Such a partitioning-off of the chancel and altar has been a strict condition right up to the present time when a church room is used for secular activities. The school chapel at Strand was succeeded by Svanvik Chapel in 1934, but a similar combination of school and church, with folding doors, is still to be found at the Gratangsbotn School Chapel in Troms, since 1926.

The building at Strand dating from 1905 was designed by the architect Bredo Greve. He was an architect who had won many architectural competitions at this time, so it is clear that the department wanted to go after and obtain the best, even though the format was small-scale and its appointment simple.