Blast from the Past: West High School
Featured, History — By Thatcher Imboden on August 16, 2010 1:28 am
 West High School in early 1900s Built in 1908 on the southwest corner of Hennepin Avenue and 28th Street, West High School opened with over 1,000 students. One of its most memorable features included a large auditorium featured a balcony, windows on some of the sides and along the back wall, architectural detail, and a large stage. The building was expanded in 1916, bringing the four-story building’s size to 162,516 square feet. A 1931 report on the building’s fire safety conditions reported that the enrollment at the time was 2,268 and had 65 classrooms and 8 special rooms. The basement housed the boys gymnasium, metalworking shop, and boiler room. The first floor contained the lunch room, kitchen, building machinery, laboratories, domestic science, woodworking, and normal classrooms. The library, auditorium, stage, sewing, and normal classrooms occupied the second floor. The third and fourth floors of the school were devoted to ordinary class work. A 1963 report stated that the building was located on 3.7 acres of land and the athletic field on 3.3 acres. An evening graphic arts program and adult education was offered in the evenings. Throughout the 1950s, enrollment at West High School fluctuated between 728 in 1952 to 878 in 1959. Class size in 1963 had increased to 1,016, which was below the report’s optimum capacity of 1,099.  An aerial view of west High School in the late 1920s or early 1930s There were classes for many subjects, ranging from cooking, drafting, electrical engineering, machine shop, woodworking, domestic science, and more. Students had a wide range of athletic options, such as field hockey, speedball, hiking, horseback riding, tennis, tumbling, skating, fencing, volleyball, swimming, and more. The school’s athletic field was in between the building and the railroad tracks, perpendicular to Hennepin Avenue. The school closed in 1982 and was demolished in 1984. A senior apartment building, townhomes, and the YWCA were built on the school’s site. Most of their existing student body were transferred to Southwest High School. The old West sign is embedded at the corner of 28th Street and Hennepin Avenue in honor of the site’s history. Prior to West’s construction, the Russell Farm and Residence used to occupy the site. |
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Thatcher Imboden
How cities work and change, how they are the product of their inhabitants and outside forces, and the resulting livability keep me thinking and dreaming about the future. I work in urban real estate development, am Past President of an Uptown business organization, grew up in Uptown, was on an Uptown neighborhood association Board, and am an Uptown and Lyn-Lake historian.
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2 Comments
I have fond memories of walking past Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles on my way to West High every morning. Then after school I’d sometime hop a train to get most of the way home. I could never understand why they expanded in the late 70′s just to close down in the early 80′s. Uptown just isn’t the same without it. At least Jefferson Jr. High is still there.
It was sublime to bike on summer mornings from south of the Creek, around Harriet and Calhoun, to West High for my summer-school German.
During the school year I went to Washburn; both my parents had gone to West. I recall the hallway there with the ancient athletic trophies, and an inscription on the walls, something like “Oh what a day! So fought and fairly won!”
I liked that routine so much I did it three years in a row. Have never been to Germany, but I still read German every day.
That the building was torn down is testimony to what some call the American School of Architecture.