Principal Elizabeth Rivera weaved between groups of students on a recent afternoon, showing off the current incarnation of Arizonaβs oldest operating public high school.
Rivera was a school administrator in New Mexico before coming to Arizona. Tucson High Magnet School was like nothing sheβd seen before.
βI thought it was beautiful; thatβs what I noticed, the beauty and age.β
One-hundred years of age, to be exact, for the high schoolβs current main building. Its construction began on Sept. 8, 1923. (Tucson High opened in 1906, but its original building is no longer used by the school.)
But along with the historical significance come the shortcomings of age, which students, faculty and staff live with.
In leading the recent tour, Rivera was not only touting Tucson Highβs history, but showing some of the areas needing renovations and upgrades.
A proposed Tucson Unified School District bond package on the Nov. 7 ballot would pay for many of those upgrades.
The 100-year-old Tucson High building, along with the rest of the schoolβs campus, stand to gain about $14 million in upgrades, total, if voters approve the much broader, district-wide bond package of $480 million for TUSDβs 88 schools, whose average age is 55 years.
Those include new and updated safety features, improvements to existing spaces, and improved technology.
Bringing it βinto the 21st centuryβ
The hallways have a subtle scent of age β not bad, just old.
Certainly not like smoke, which is what a lowered level of the school did smell like many years ago. What was once the smokersβ lounge until a few decades ago is now the schoolβs historical display.
It is curated by Cecelia Garcia, Tucson High Class of 2016.
βWhen I was going here, I was like, βyeah, hundred-year-old building, whatever,β β Garcia remembers.
After graduating, she studied art history in college. βI started being fascinated with the old buildings here in town. I was touring buildings, I was reading articles and books and I always came circling back to (this) building,β she said.
A highlight of the building, the auditorium β important to the fine arts and technology magnet school β is one of the areas needing upgrades.
An antique chandelier, roughly the size of a small bathroom, illuminates the seating with bare light bulbs and delicate metalwork.
Thatβs about all it illuminates. The lighting system for the stage is lacking.
The sound system is Macgyvered out of stacks of miscellaneous speakers on either ends of the stage.
Should the bond issue pass, $300,000 would go to renovations to fine art, stage, room and audio-visual elements.
Plans to update Tucson High must be carefully crafted to maintain the integrity of the structure.
βWe want to keep that here for a really long time and maintain historical beauty, but also bring the tech and things that we use for performing arts into the 21st century,β Rivera said. βThatβs important.β
The building at 400 N. Second Ave. is part of the West University Historic District. Both Tucson High and West University Historic District are on the Register of National Historic Places.
Vocational building upgrades
Parts of Tucson High Magnet School get less attention than the star of the campus, but other buildings need some love, too.
The vocational building has an unused section. Rivera tries several keys before unlocking the door. A TMHS employee seemed surprised to see anyone entering the area, let alone the school principal.
βWeβre just doing a tour,β Rivera assured them.
The section is silent, save for Riveraβs heels clicking up the stairs. There is no HVAC. Heat sifts through cracked vintage glass bricks. The rooms themselves still resemble classrooms, though many have been left stripped in cleanout.
In the districtβs proposal, THMSβs vocational building β also called the V-building β would receive $3.5 million in upgrades, applied beyond the unused section.
Improvements to classrooms and learning spaces on THMSβs campus would be allotted more than $4.8 million, including the V-building renovation.
βReally the history of the cityβ
Garcia said many students are intrigued by their schoolβs history, once they learn of it.
βI always try and push it into them: Get involved in your community first, because Tucson High is the oldest high school in the state,β she tells student-historians. βYou could just start here.β
She shares TikTok videos and Instagram posts of her discoveries, in an effort to get people engaged in Tucson Highβs history.
Rivera said she thinks her students know the significance of their main building.
βI think they do,β she ventured. βThis is really the history of the city. Itβs not just high school. The whole community (came through here) long before there were any other schools in Tucson.β
Rivera said the schoolβs Hall of Fame display in the main lobby is popular with students, too.
βThereβs astronauts and politicians and doctors and lawyers, local leaders, actresses and actors and people who have literally landed on the moon,β she said. (Well, almost. Tucson High alum Frank Borman commanded 1968βs Apollo 8, the first NASA mission to travel to the moon, but did not land.)
βThatβs pretty exciting for them. We always see kids looking at (the) photos and reading the names,β Rivera said.
Continuing the legacy
Outside, the schoolβs mascot badgers hold court on the faΓ§ade. The outside staircases stretch across the side of Tucson High. Designed by locally prominent architect Henry Jaastad, the building has ornate details including Corinthian columns.
Itβs the kind of sight movie scenes are made of.
In fact, a movie was made at Tucson High, starring Patrick Dempsey and Amanda Peterson. Canβt Buy Me Love, released in 1987, has made the school a legend.
Micromoments, many of which Garcia curates, are what make the Tucson High legend continue off-screen.
Some of those moments are Garciaβs own.
Towards the beginning of her time as Tucson High curator, Garcia was going through documents preserved by her predecessor.
βI was going through her drawers of stuff and all of the sudden, thereβs my grandfather, facing me.β
Through her work, Garcia has seen hundreds of other Tucson High studentsβ memories. There are thousands of photos of a rodeo queen, snarky between-friends messages scribbled in yearbooks and aged photos of Tucson Highβs construction.
The building is indeed old, Garcia said. βUpdates need to be made. But ... everything is still here.β