La Porte High School - El Pe Yearbook (La Porte, IN)

Page 18 text:

Schools 0 THE NEW HIGH SCHOOL ACCORDING to present plans LaPorte’s new High School will be ready for occupancy next September. The gym and auditorium are already in use. The total cost of the building and equipment will exceed $500,000. It will accommodate eight hundred students and contain twelve hundred lock- ers. The gymnasium seats seventeen hundred and the auditorium twelve hundred persons. The basement consists of boiler rooms, coal bunkers, showers, dressing rooms and two rooms specially constructed with concrete lead ways, in which students may store their bicycles. Upon the ground floor there are a kitchen and cafeteria which will serve three hundred, an auto machanic shop, paint shop, machine shop, wood-working shop and a tool room. Here are also the commercial depart- ment consisting of four rooms, the Home Economics department with nine rooms, the Art department of two rooms, and the physical education de- partment with six rooms. Likewise there is a small gymnasium for girls. The first floor is made up of seven recitation rooms, one study hall, a library with offices, each with three rooms. The auditorium is entered upon this floor. The second floor consists of ten recitation rooms, two study halls, four science laboratories, one teachers’ rest room and two student rest rooms. The balcony of the auditorium is entered from this floor. The building is fireproof in every respect and all the latest plans in school building construction have been incorporated in it. It is, indeed, something for LaPorte to be proud of and has been years. Twelve

Page 17 text:

Schools

Page 19 text:

Schools Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow FOR the past generation the “Old High School Building” has served needs of secondary education in the city of LaPorte. Erected in the year 1894 at a cost of $50,000, it rounds out its thirtieth year with the completion of the present school term. Many features in the construction of the Old Building reflect credit upon its builders; the regular rooms are commodius and well lighted; the heating and ventilating system has been most satisfactory; the interior beauty is enhanced by the oak trim throughout, and heavy plate glass windows and doors. The building was built to accomodate approximately three hundred stu- dents with no provision for shop work, home economics, physical training auditorium work, or athletics. Provision was made in the Central school building for the pursuit of some of these activities in a limited way. The exceedingly over-crowded condition during the last two or three years has brought the student body and patrons to a keen realization of the need of a modern school plant. Probably no school board ever begun the erection of a school building when tax payers of its city were so nearly unanimously and whole heart- edly back of the project. Public sentiment prevailed upon school officials to choose a central location. Consequently a section of the city in the resi- dence district was purchased, the dwellings removed and work of con- struction proper was begun in the fall of 1922. The plant will be completed and ready for occupancy with the opening of the school term of 1924-25, modern in every respect. There are three floors including the basement which is at the ground level. The ground floor is equipped for shops, commercial and home economics courses, also cafeteria and boys and girls gymnasiums. On the first floor is located the offices of Superintendent and Principal, library and study hall, each with a capacity of one hundred students, main floor of the auditorium and class rooms. The second floor is equipped with laboratory class rooms, balcony to the auditorium and rest rooms. The new courses to be offered in the new building are auto mechanics, machine shop work, in the vocational department, a second year of stenog- raphy, business English and office practice in the commercial department, journalism and literature of the Bible in the English department, and physical training for all students. It is planned that the dean of girls shall be given an office and several periods each week for work relative to the welfare of high school girls. Equal in importance with the additional courses and with the greater degree of comfort which the new school building will afford is the new school spirit which will come as a result of the fine accomodations for the student body. A spirit of pride born of the new surroundings, a spirit of fellowship coming from frequent assemblies of the entire student body in the spacious ..,J4—— '-iff be the natural consequence. Then will follow a greater purpose, increased scholarship, and in every sense a greater Porte High School. PREVIEW Thine