Austin High’s north section opened 100 years ago
Massive project drew community support for two bonding votes to finance new school
By Tim Ruzek
Big events typically start with the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner.”
Nearly 100 years ago, however, the song came at the end of a Friday night dedication ceremony for Austin’s new high school building in its auditorium (today’s Christgau Hall).
This song closed out the celebration by the community that overwhelmingly supported constructing the nearly $1 million Gothic Revival edifice — nearly $14.8 million in today’s dollars — for grades 7–12. The Minneapolis Morning Tribune called it the “third-largest high school in the United States” featuring 275 rooms; an auditorium for about 1,200; a state-of-the-art swimming pool; a gymnasium; a large cafeteria; and a library with a fireplace.
After two years of work, Austin had put itself on the map as a community that valued education.
Dr. J.M. McConnell, commissioner of education for the State of Minnesota, spoke at the evening dedication on Dec. 9, 1921 — a day that started with a three-gun “sunrise salute” to usher in the “momentous occasion,” according to the Mower County News.
A U.S. flag was hoisted up the school’s new, steel flagstaff — a 90-foot pole shipped by truck in two, 45-foot sections. (They arrived in April 1920 as the last piece of steel for the high school.)
The flag in its rightful place, students attended a day of classes before the building — more commonly called Central High School — was opened to visitors to wander and “marvel in wonderment at progress over the ‘Little Red Schoolhouse’ of their childhood days,” the Mower County News reported.
More than 2,000 people — the city had just 10,000 residents — went through the high school that afternoon, getting their “first glimpse of the handsome new structure which is to be the education Mecca of the youth of Austin and Mower County for many years to come.”
Crowded classes lead to construction
In February 1919, the Austin School Board unanimously decided a new high school building should be built “as soon as possible to relieve the congested condition,” the Mower County Transcript-Republican reported.
Austin was finishing up a decade that saw it grow by a whopping 45%; overall the district had 72 more students a year earlier.
District officials did a “careful investigation of the seriously crowded condition” of the schools, especially Franklin School, then the high school, located on the southern half of where Austin High now stands.
“Every school in the city is overcrowded,” stated the Feb. 12, 1919, article. “Districts have had to be changed, and some children are obliged to go long distances to school on account of the crowded condition.”
Four months later, voters approved a bond issue not to exceed $450,000 by an overwhelming vote of 726–75 in a Saturday special election that did not draw as large of a turnout as expected.
“It will be a magnificent structure and in arrangement and detail the very last word in school plans,” wrote the Transcript-Republican on June 11, 1919. G.L. Lockhart, a St. Paul architect and engineer who wrote a 1918 book about constructing public school buildings, was chosen to design the high school.
District officials made room for the new school by razing the three-story Washington elementary school, which was just 12 years old but had inadequate heating and was in poor condition. Some nearby homes also were removed.
The demolition work began in early October 1919. The following April, three giant boilers — each about 20 feet long and 6 feet in diameter — arrived by rail.
In July of that year, officials laid the cornerstone, a “large block of Bedford cut stone, inscribed with AD 1920.
At this time, the Transcript-Republican reported on the project’s new bricklayers foreman — Oscar Gunderson of Minneapolis — who was the first U.S. man to go down the “gigantic runway at Chippewa Falls (WI) on skis.” The headline: “Bricklaying is His Trade but Skiing is More Fun.”
Delays and added costs
By September 1920, Austin was experiencing an “unusually heavy enrollment” in the elementary grades and junior high while the high school was “about as usual,” the Transcript-Republican reported.
While students prepared to head back to school that month, stone for their new high school also finally was arriving after having been lost in rail transit.
“Another carload of stone, which has been holding up the construction work to a certain extent on the new high school building arrived Tuesday and was unloaded yesterday,” wrote the Transcript-Republican on Sept. 2, 1920.
“Now that the stone has arrived, a large force of bricklayers will be added and the work on the outside wall will show marked progress.”
During the wait, electricians and plumbers worked in the building’s basement.
As of Nov. 18, 1920, the Mower County News reported work on the school was being pushed rapidly while showing much progress.
“Stone and steel, a carload of each, arrived for the construction work on the new high school building.”
By March 1921, the school board faced a need to ask voters for more: another $325,000 for building expenses and furnishings, bringing the total at that point to $816,758.
To make their case, officials in mid-March opened the high school for public inspection. Placards were printed by the mechanical drawing department at the school for placing on every room in the building still under construction, the News wrote on March 10, 1921.
“Expressions of surprise, awe, wonderment, approbation and condemnation were heard Saturday and Sunday from the crowds that filed thru the new high school building for the first time since the project was started,” the News reported.
Comments varied but most opinion was “laudatory to the efforts of the school board to give Austin the best and most modern school equipment in the state.”
Voters approved the second bond by an 8–1 margin — 569–71.
‘Second to none’
When the school opened Sept. 12, 1921, the News called it “second to none in Minnesota.”
“It is not only one of the largest but also is one of the best from an architectural standpoint,” the News wrote.
Local and regional newspapers differed in the school’s total cost. Listings were for “well over half million” to a “million-dollar school” to $1,125,000 to $1,250,000.
The auditorium (Christgau Hall) boasted a main floor, large balcony extending around three sides and a stage that was “unusually large and affords ample room for the many high school productions.” Plans for the auditorium also included hosting student assemblies, mass meetings, and other community functions.
In the 1922 Austinian yearbook, the auditorium was described as “a beautiful room, artistically lighted, fully equipped in every detail. It is the ideal place for general assembly and entertainment. The stage is very large and the scenery and stage sets varied and beautiful. A Steinway Grand piano is the crowning feature of the auditorium.”
On the first floor, rooms mainly were dedicated for the sciences, including physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, general science and agriculture. It also had rooms for the manual arts, such as manual training and shop work, and the commercial department for typewriting, shorthand, bookkeeping and other subjects.
A large conservatory on the south side was available for botany classes and agriculture.
The older students occupied the second floor, the junior high kids were on the third floor with both using the first floor for sciences and vocational subjects. Both second and third floors had two study rooms for 80 students.
A swimming pool — 90 feet by 22 feet — was “one of the largest in the state” and ranged from 4 to 8 feet deep. Its water was purified by the “best of modern systems, known as the ultra-violet ray method.”
The gymnasium floor (where the library is now) wasn’t completed, and the large, basement cafeteria was not ready for use in the 1921–22 school year. Part of the building’s west wing was left open for a possible junior college.
Also, the library opened the following school year with a fireplace, tables, chairs and 200 volumes of books.
Continued growth
Franklin school was torn down in 1939 to make way for Austin High’s major addition to the south that added today’s Knowlton Auditorium and Ove Berven Gym. This section was dedicated in September 1940. (Franklin, which was built in 1891, had been remodeled in 1907, when it was considered one of the best modern school buildings in the state.)
By the late 1960s, though, district officials began discussing long-range plans for a new building because the maintenance and upgrade needs of the 1921 section were high.
In 1976, school board chairman Stephen Wright said the 1921 portion should be “discontinued as soon as it is practical.” Its condition was not good for educational needs or current building standards, he said.
Yet, the district and community in the end chose to preserve and enhance the 1921 building as well as the 1940 section over the next 20 years. In the 1990s, a major restoration project also added gymnasiums to the south side.
Stephan Benzkofer edited this article .Wendy Larson contributed research to this article.
