West High School - Hesperian Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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WEST HIGH SCHOOL 4DMIN| TF 1TI©N

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MILESTONES With colors gaily showing for the first time, West high school formally opened its doors to the public on the evening of September 25, 1908. Guests were welcomed by members of the faculty and conducted on tours of the building by all-important seniors. West, from the Hennepin avenue viewpoint, was the same in 1908 as it is in 1933, although it did not extend so far back on the Humboldt side. Within, the building also presented much the same appearance with its wide front hall and two smaller passages at right angles, terminating, however, in the auditorium. That portion of the school now containing the gymnasiums, some classrooms, and the industrial shops was not a part of the original West. In their tours of inspection, guests were shown, besides the regular recitation rooms, the chemistry, botany, physics, and physical geography laboratories, which were the finest in Minnesota at the time. Visitors also inspected the mechanical department consisting of the shop, wood-turning, machine, forge, free-hand, and commercial drawing classes and the commercial rooms all of which were modestly stated to surpass any in the Northwest. The auditorium, seating approximately fifteen hundred students, was built on much the same plan as the present hall save that the back wall contained windows and the balcony was less spacious. Prior to the erection of West high, the corner of 28th and Hennepin was variously occupied. In 1855 it supported an old claim shanty. This was supplanted by the Russell farmhouse, which, in turn, gave place to a brick house belonging to the same family when the city grew to take in the area. From the time of its destruction until 1908 the lot stood vacant. One problem was presented, however, that was difficult of solution. A considerable number of unsuccessful pupils, thinking that they saw an opportunity in the new organization to enjoy life in various unstudious ways, succeeded in attaching themselves to West. Although some had to be eliminated, and others were susceptible to moral suasion, this group nevertheless helped to create a legend that the school was less inclined to idealism than were its parent schools, and more inclined to frivolity. This legend gathered force from the quite inaccurate supposition that pupils at West came from wealthy homes that indulged their children in all kinds of soft living. At any time a census would have revealed a neat majority of sons and daughters of toil. A. N. Ozjas