Photos May 2015 Visit

We start our May 2015 photo tour at the bottom and work our way floor-by-floor to the top of the school.

The girls' gym is the lowest room in the school,  it is actually a sub-basement below street level.   Technically the boiler room and the coal bunker are also on this sub-basement level (and just beyond the blue mats on the far wall) but they are not intended for occupation.

South wing - basement shop area looking South.  Shop and Art classes kept me sane during my time in the school.  No mystery to that,  creative projects gave my mind an opportunity for such intense micro focus that I temporarily escaped what was an increasingly soul-destroying daily environment. 

This woodworking area was much better equipped in 1962.

Same shop room looking North.  Note the steam heat radiators on the ceiling.  The area on this side of the crack was where the one-story shop addition started, it was the newest part of the school.  The area on the far side of the crack is the 1926 addition which added the auditorium and extended the north and south wings almost to Church Street. 

Leaving the shop area by its eastern door,  you find yourself in this circular hallway which meanders under the back of the auditorium.  This has always been used by the Music Department as it has a secret entrance to the orchestra pit (that rumor is true).  The rooms to the right were for print shop classes and equipment back when the building was a high school.

At the end of the Music Department hallway is this cluttered classroom (Room 021) on the NE corner of the school,  in high school days it was the mechanical drawing room.  In junior high days it was part of the music department and memorable for a music appreciation class that in retrospect was the most worthless class I have ever taken.  Not because of the subject but because of the instructor who was hopelessly disengaged and totally clueless about how to reach a classroom of 12-year-olds about this subject.  Clifford Hurst teaching Music Appreciation did not in any good way resemble Jack Black in "School of Rock".

Note the cluttered area in the back corner.  That is an elevated platform with a door opening to the outside of the building.  As in 1962 it is painted shut with no exit signs.  The only reason I can think for its creation is that during a fire the exiting students would otherwise have to go up a flight of stairs to an exit being used by three floors of descending students;  apparently after its construction it was decided that the daily danger of students escaping confinement through this exit was greater than being trapped on a crowed staircase.

Here are the fire doors from the gym side,  under the basket are the stairs to the visiting locker room.  The white panel on the wall behind the basket is a sealed door to the second floor hallway,  the top section is the transom.  Why there was ever a doorway in that spot is a mystery although it may have opened to the outside fire escape of the old high school - whose stairs were torn off when the gym was constructed.

The  photo above and the one below were taken by Aaron Pittenger just prior to the demolition and borrowed from the "You Know You Are From Ashland" website.  Note the brick header (above photo) for a window on the south side of the first high school.  As already mentioned much of the foundation and walls for the gym were portions of the older building.

These folding wooden doors,  designed as a backdrop for the stage,   cost a ton of money and were a hazard (even when folded up) during basketball games and gym classes.  They have not been in use for at least 60 years but for some reason were not removed until the demo.

Staircase up from the Cottage Street entrance -  the administrative offices are in the background. 

Looking south past the bulletin boards and trophy cases on the 2nd floor - called West Hall.  Sure I could have rotated this one but the tilted visual effect seemed more appropriate.

Two 2nd floor classrooms in the North Hall,   the top one was "The Little Theater" and had an elevated stage on the west end and a ticket window opening to the hallwasy.

The bottom one  was my 8th grade math room where Pam Leonard and I battled all year for the #1 ranking.  Mr. Robert McFarlin kept an on-going class ranking sheet on the wall. 

 The view east from a window along the 2nd floor hallway.  The roof below is a later addition housing the shop rooms,   to the extreme right is the roof of last addition to the school.  The next two photos are the interior of that addition;  now a well-equipped weight room it served as a study hall and lunch room in the 1960's and was the only portion of the school that seemed at all modern and up-to-date.

Not exactly the Stairway To Heaven.  This is the NE corner staircase between the 2nd and 3rd floors,  the double doors on the left lead to the balcony of the auditorium. 

3rd Floor - South Wing - Looking West

Note the "Alice In Wonderland" door on the right wall and the door to the catwalk over the stage just beyond it.

3rd Floor - Central Wing - Looking North

The Science rooms are on the left under the clock.

3rd Floor - Central Wing - Looking South

In the early 1960's the cafeteria food was so bad that they implemented a brown bag option.  You could come to this ticket window and get a bag lunch for 35 cents - consisting of a baloney sandwich on white bread,  a small bag of potato chips, and a red apple.  Which originated the expression: "Are you a good witch or a sandwich?"

What we did not know was that originally the room behind this window was a large cloak room,  the high school did not have large student lockers until the 1950's.  Until then students checked their coats at this window and received a numbered claim check,  the room was full of coat racks in numerical order.  Before going home students would present their claim check and the student workers inside would use it to find the matching numbered coat.

View of the courtyard from "The Curve"

Then as now a less than inspiring vista - the Mansfield reformatory is less seedy.

 Much of the stone foundation of the original high school building can on the left side,

 the new gym was built on the old foundation ten years after the front part of the new high school was constructed.