Madison Central High School - Tychoberahn Yearbook (Madison, WI)

Page 18 text:

(o? •i1 s 1 3 le cikY l,a(l progressed to such an extent that tlu need for a larger liigli school became evident. The site which Central High School now occupies was selected as likely, and work was immediately begun on a new building. This was but one of many public improvements which emphasized the growth of the city. The new school was larger and far better equipped than the old; a new water system was installed, streets were paved; industrial enterprises grew and prospered; the business district about the square expanded; new university buildings were erected and on the East West, ami South the city limits were continually extended. Madison was indeed entering into its own as capitol of the State of Wisconsin. ( Page Sixteen |

Page 17 text:

 sg JN A NSW ER to this demand the school board authorized the purchase of a building in which the first preparatory classes for university had l een organized in 1856. In 1857 the transaction was completed, and the building became Madison’s first high school. The facilities it offered were hardly those of a country school today; but at that time, when educational standards were none too high in the frontier states among which Wisconsin might still be numbered, it seemed remarkable. The board fence that surrounded it, the ill-paved street with its crude gutters, the wooded hills which had yet to be cleared in the name of progress, all were characteristic of Madison then. Even the central portions of the city were undeveloped, and the present residential districts of East, South, and West Madison still were either occupied by farms or were studded with limber. But the city was beginning to expand, to take shape; and as the seat of the government and university of the state its future was assured. | Page Fifteen )

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[N I HIS PERIOD of rapid expansion it became increasingly easy to picture the Madison of a later day. It took no great imagination to see the size of the city doubled, to see industrial, educational, and governmental developments reaching metropolitan proportions. In 1856 there were four wards; the school boards' budget was only a matter of several thousand dollars, and there were but five public schools in the city. Today there are ten wards; the annual school budget amounts to a million dollars, anil the city school system includes sixteen large, modern institutions. Today Central High School is famous for the excellent calibre ol its faculty and lor the academic and athletic achievements of those who attend and have attended it. Now Central High School is at the climax ol .'s notable career, ami in its record it lends added lustre to the history of the progress of Madison. | Page Seventeen |