Embedded Files
I created this page on January 26, 2016. At this moment the school demo is in progress which has motivated me to do some work on the page. I will begin with some photos I took back in early September 2015, the day after the auction. And will post demo sets as the project progresses.
It is a strange irony that I find myself in the role of the collective memory of a building for which I had so little fondness. So it goes.
Click here for photos of my June 23rd Visit
Click here for Sept. 2015 photos of the first floor
Click here for Sept. 2015 photos of the upper floors
Click for Junior High Demo Photo Set #6
Click for Junior High Demo Photo Set #7
Click for Junior High Demo Photo Set #8
Click for Junior High Demo Photo Set #9
Click for Junior High Demo Photo Set #10
My 7th grade home room faced Cottage Street and we found looking out the windows at the strange people and delapadated houses on the west side of the street to be great entertainment. Most of those houses were torn down over the last 53 years but the most interesting one, the square wedding cake house, remains on the corner of 4th street. It is built like a three layer wedding cake, all that is missing are statues of the bride and groom standing on top of that windowed third story.
Inside the legendary tunnel which runs the entire length of the Cottage Street portion of the school, this is the oldest portion of the school. Back it the early 60's the access door under the south staircase was always closed and the rumor was that it was full of antique school furniture. I was skeptical of this notion, it seemed unlikely because the classrooms were still full of antique school furniture.
I am looking south toward that door in this shot. The water heater goes to the showers in the girls' locker, there is a door to the locker room just behind me to my left. The roof of the tunnel is a huge sheet metal heating duct from the days when this section had forced air heating. The original two heat exchangers are still in the basement under the main gymnasium. When the 4th Street section was built it included a steam heating plant for the entire school and this forced air system was shut down. I guess they figured that the school had become too large for a single forced air system.
Two shots inside the girls' locker room, note the pink walls. The section beyond the brick pilings was a one story addition that juts on into the courtyard. To get to the girls' gym from here you must "descend" a flight of stairs to the sub-basement.
Vent leading the fan and the heat exchanger.
Looking south down the tunnel, from about three quarters of the way along its length.
Taken from the south entrance looking north along the full length of the tunnel.
The tunnel entrance is at the bottom of the south staircase, just inside this former study hall room. This room's significance to me is that it is where they sold ice cream bars at lunchtime for a nickel. The cafeteria food was so lousy (worse than any cafeteria in the system and worse than any Air Force or Army chow hall that I would experience a few years later) that on most days my 35 cents of lunch money would go toward seven ice cream bars. On occasion I would go with three 10 cent brownies and one ice cream bar. At the time I suspected that at least one of the cooks worked at nearby Camp Mowana each summer, as the quality of tater tot dominated camper cuisine seemed horribly familiar.
Looking out the study hall windows at the rebuilt Methodist Church. The Cottage Street side of this room is below street level.
The two photos above are of the larger study hall room which opened out to the paved playground. This is the latest addition to the building and it was part of the high school's extensive shop area. When the school was converted to a Junior High in 1962 so little shop equipment remained that this room was available for a study hall and a lunch room.
The site of my banishment from Mr. Montgomery's shop class in seventh grade for calling him "Monty" in a British accent. Another reprobate was banished for some other infraction and we spent the time playing hockey - kicking a small piece of wood on the polished terrazzo floor.
This is a puzzling portion of the building. The wall on the right was parallel to the old 1870's high school building, which was kind of absorbed when the Cottage Street structure was expanded by extending its two eastern wings, to surround the new gym and auditorium. The gym was roughly on the footprint of the 1870's structure and even incorporated much of the original stone foundation and some portion of the brick walls. The aggregate floors are only found in the hallways of the wing additions, the Cottage Street structure did not have them. At some point after expansion the wall on the left was added to narrow the hallway.
Staircase to the first floor, it comes out just across the hall from the girls' rest room.
Taken from the base of the staircase, the polished aggregate floor ends at far door. Most likely it was a wider hall to the main door of the shop area. When the shop was expanded a portion of the hallway was appropriated by erecting the wall on the right. Taking the doorway on the left gets you to the laundry room and the locker rooms under the gym floor. It also gives access to the heat exchangers from the old heating system.
Excuse the blurred photo of old heat exchanger, part of a heating system that has not been used for almost 90 years.
This is the shower in the men's locker room. To me it looked like something the Nazis would have used in their extermination camps and my mind would drift to Mad Magazine's bit about "The Wit & Wisdom of Adolf Hitler".
"But the shower heads were really poison gas outlets, the joke was on them".
When no one laughed Hitler deadpanned: "I guess you had to be there". The next day he saw to it that those who had not laughed were there!
Hitler was noted for little touches like that.
Main shop area, the section on the far side was an addition to the original south wing, the opening to it was probably once a bank of windows.
Down in the music room behind this door is the school's other legendary tunnel. Although this one is a bit of a disappointment as it is simply a narrow flight of wooden stairs leading up the orchestra pit in the auditorium.
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