On Oct. 10, 1924, local residents and education leaders packed the “auditorium of classical beauty” at Tucson High School to dedicate the newly constructed main building.
The Arizona Daily Star described the event the following day as “one of the most impressive occasions of years.”
A color drawing of the main building at Tucson High School, which opened in 1924.
A century later, that original building, with its row of 14 columns marking the entrance, still serves as the heart of the largest high school in Southern Arizona.
The Tucson High Badger Foundation will commemorate the building’s 100th anniversary with a gala celebration of its own on Nov. 2.
The event, which will also include a tribute to military veterans from Tucson High, is scheduled to begin outside the school’s gym at 12:30 p.m. and move inside after a flyover by the Arizona Air National Guard.
Local members of the nonprofit Patriot Guard Riders will greet people at the door, Tucson Detachment 007 of the Marine Corps League will present the colors, and Tucson High’s own Mariachi Rayos Del Sol will perform the national anthem and other music.
Two Tucson-born Badgers will be the featured speakers: Attorney Burton J. Kinerk, from the Class of 1953, will speak about the history and significance of the school’s main building. And retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Albert B. Crawford Jr., from the Class of 1945, will lead the dedication of the school’s expanded Walkway of Honor, which now includes 825 bricks engraved with the names of former Tucson High students who served in the military.
An aerial image of the newly built main building at Tucson High School in 1924.
Badger Foundation board chairman Jerry Strutz said the event is free of charge and open to anyone who wants to come.
“We will have a shuttle for older folks that may have trouble with the walk from the parking lot to the gym,” Stutz said. “If the crowd is larger than expected, we can always pull down the bleachers. Room for all to attend.”
Today, Tucson High Magnet School is home to more than 3,100 students, but enrollment stood at around 45 when the secondary school was first established in 1906.
According to the Badger Foundation’s history of the institution, classes were initially held at what was then known as the Plaza School at 13th Street and Fourth Avenue.
Tucson High moved to 501 E. Sixth Street, the current location of Roskruge Middle School, in 1908 and graduated its first class of 10 students in 1910, two years before Arizona became a state.
By the early 1920s, though, overcrowding at the school prompted a campaign to build a larger facility across Sixth Street from the current facility.
At the dedication ceremony for the new school 100 years ago this month, Tucson High Principal O. W. Patterson thanked taxpayers for helping to put an end to the “chess playing proposition we have had in the old building,” according to a report in the Oct. 11, 1924, edition of the Star.
An early undated photo shows a class meeting inside Tucson High School’s main building, which turns 100 years old this month.
Tucson schools Supt. C. E. Rose, who oversaw the design and construction of the new facility, received a standing ovation from the assembled crowd at the Tucson High auditorium.
During his remarks, he defended the project’s eye-popping price tag of $750,000, the equivalent of roughly $13.7 million today. According to the Star, Rose told the crowd that U.S. taxpayers spent more on gasoline for joyriding than they did on education.
Tucson Board of Education president Mose Drachman presided over the dedication, which began after 10 minutes of total darkness due to what the newspaper called burned-out fuses outside the new school.
“The dedication of this building marks a new era and shows our desire to work for better things in education,” Drachman said.
