Holyoke High School - Annual Yearbook (Holyoke, MA)

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and parents, for Hit is better not to be than not to be noble. From 1872 to 1883 three students gradu- ated from the high school who have since done a great deal for Holyoke High and the other Holyoke Public Schools. They were: Miss M. Adele Allen, a teacher of classics at Holyoke High for many years, Miss Lilian W. Fay, long-time teacher and dean of girls at Holyoke High, and Miss Jennie B. Scolley, teacher and Assistant Superintendent of Schools under Mr. William R. Peck. Between 1880 and 1897 a heavy influx of immigrants more than doubled the population of Holyoke. This sharp increase in population necessitated the building of a new high school, which was begun in 1898. Twenty years ear- lier, Mr. E. L. Kirtland, the Superintendent of Schools, had foreseen the need for a new high school. Although he was not superinten- dent when the high school was completed, Mr. Kirtland performed much of the groundwork for the school. He persuaded the city to pur- chase the site for the school in 1895, and his school report for that year included plans which were later accepted. The following is the de- scription of the new high school that appeared in the newspaper on Friday, September 9, basement: On each floor there are toilets, cloak and book rooms, and two openings down which waste pa- per may be thrown to the basement. Each floor has an emergency room, which will be fitted with a medical closet. The building is 185' X 225' and contains sixty rooms and an assem- bly hall. Upon entering the rnain entrance, a long corridor is seen and at left are situated the principal's rooms. The 'main rooms are con- nected by telephone with every other room in the building. There are four sixty-horse pow- ered boilers which will be used in the indirect steam heating system. Every room in the building is connected with the Ventilating sys- tem and it would be hard to find a more perfect one. In the center of the quadrangle is the auditorium on the first floor. the balcony having a second floor entrance. Over 1,200 people may be seated here, the bal- cony seating 375 and the floor 840. 1898: The marble tablets at the Pine Street en The new building occupies an en- tire square and is bounded by Pine, Beech, Cabot, and Sargeant Streets It is of stone and yellow pressed bricks, three stories high with an attic. There are four entrances to the trance commemorate Superintendent Preston W. Searchas devotion to higher learning. It had been earlier agreed upon that the names of Mayor, the Board of Aldermen, the Superin- tendent of Schools, and the School Committee were to be carved on the tablets, but the stone cutter had no list and called Superintendent 25

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Stephen Holman The Elm Street High School I. P. Buckland NEARLY 100 YEARS AGO this lovely group was the first class to graduate from Holyoke High School. Front Row, left to right: Emma Loomis, Sarah Grover, Alice Emerson and Maria Kelt. In back: Betty Wildes, at left, and Imogene Heywood, This was the class of 1865 at HHS, the first class to graduate after the establishment of the regular course at the high school.

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Search who gave him the following names: Jefferson, Horace Mann, Humbolt, Faraday, Galileo, Newton, Homer, Columbus, Shake- speare, Goethe, Michaelangelo, Rafael, Wil- liam.of Sens, and Bach. In his report to the school committee for 1899 Superintendent Search offered an inter- esting suggestion: HI repeat my recommen- dation of one year ago, that the many changes of pupils from classroom to classroom incedent to the work of the high school, together with the enormous size of our building with its may stairs and half-mile of corridors, will posi- tively demand an elevator in the new high schoolfl In September of 1898, the school began to function in its new home, situated on the block bounded on the north by Hampshire Street, and on the east by Pine. For three years the community had waited for the completion of this structure and for six months the High School Committee, the Superintendent of Schools, and the architect had labored dili- gently on the equipment. September 12th found the work so far advanced that it was possible to enter the school and to organize. By the beginning of the month of December the High School Committee had provided a lunch counter and equipped lunch-room and kitchens. Pupils could either bring with them their lunches in whole or in part, or could pro- cure them at small cost at the lunch counter. While the new building was used for school purposes from September 12th, it was not formally opened to the public until October 26. 26 On that date the regular dedication exercises took place. The following was the program Superintendent T. W. Search, The New Era in Education, President C. Stanley Hall of Clark University, Education and Patriotism, Dr. Walter L. Hervey President of the Teacher's College, The People's Part in the Building of a School, Superintendent T. M. Balliet of Springfield, Judge E. W. Chapin of Holyoke. In the evening Principal Charles H. Keyes gave an address on The House We Dedicatef' and Honorable Frank A. Hill, Sec- retary of the Massachusetts State Board of Ed- ucation, on HTeachers of the Times. The building was thoroughly illuminated on five evenings following the dedication day, opened to the public and visited by many thousand citizens. On October 4, the Alumni Association held a reunion, at which about three hundred of the alumni were present, thereby showing their loyalty to the school. The association was reorganized in July, 1898, at a meeting heldiin the old high school on Elm Street. According to the constitution then adopted, an annual social meeting was to be held in the High School building in June dur- ing the week of graduation and a business meeting once in two years in September. With the opening of the new high school, or- ganized activities developed within the student body. Each class had an organization which held a regular meeting on the last Friday of every month. The students prepared and pub- lished a school monthly known as the High School H erald. The work was put in the hands