Principal Elizabeth Rivera weaved between groups of students on a recent afternoon, showing off the current incarnation of Arizona’s oldest operating public high school.
Rivera was a school administrator in New Mexico before coming to Arizona. Tucson High Magnet School was like nothing she’d seen before.
“I thought it was beautiful; that’s what I noticed, the beauty and age.”
One-hundred years of age, to be exact, for the high school’s 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 High’s 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 school’s campus, stand to gain about $14 million in upgrades, total, if voters approve the much broader, district-wide bond package of $480 million for TUSD’s 88 schools, whose average age is 55 years.
Those include new and updated safety features, improvements to existing spaces, and improved technology.
Bringing it “into the 21st century”
The hallways have a subtle scent of age — 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 smokers’ lounge until a few decades ago is now the school’s historical display.
It is curated by Cecelia Garcia, Tucson High Class of 2016.
Cecelia Garcia explains some of the artifacts and memorabilia inside of the gallery at Tucson Magnet High School. Garcia is the curator of the school’s vast collection of Tucson High historical items.
“When I was going here, I was like, ‘yeah, hundred-year-old building, whatever,’ “ Garcia remembers.
After graduating, she studied art history in college. “I 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,” she said.
A highlight of the building, the auditorium — important to the fine arts and technology magnet school — 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.
That’s 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.
“We 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,” Rivera said. “That’s important.”
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.
“We’re just doing a tour,” Rivera assured them.
The section is silent, save for Rivera’s 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.
An abandoned classroom inside the vocational building at Tucson Magnet High School. A section of the building is closed off, but could see activity again, provided a bond issue benefitting Tucson Unified School District passes.
In the district’s proposal, THMS’s vocational building — also called the V-building — would receive $3.5 million in upgrades, applied beyond the unused section.
Improvements to classrooms and learning spaces on THMS’s campus would be allotted more than $4.8 million, including the V-building renovation.
“Really the history of the city”
Garcia said many students are intrigued by their school’s history, once they learn of it.
“I always try and push it into them: Get involved in your community first, because Tucson High is the oldest high school in the state,” she tells student-historians. “You could just start here.”
She shares TikTok videos and Instagram posts of her discoveries, in an effort to get people engaged in Tucson High’s history.
Rivera said she thinks her students know the significance of their main building.
“I think they do,” she ventured. “This is really the history of the city. It’s not just high school. The whole community (came through here) long before there were any other schools in Tucson.”
Rivera said the school’s Hall of Fame display in the main lobby is popular with students, too.
“There’s astronauts and politicians and doctors and lawyers, local leaders, actresses and actors and people who have literally landed on the moon,” she said. (Well, almost. Tucson High alum Frank Borman commanded 1968’s Apollo 8, the first NASA mission to travel to the moon, but did not land.)
“That’s pretty exciting for them. We always see kids looking at (the) photos and reading the names,” Rivera said.
Continuing the legacy
Tucson Magnet High School, 400 N, Second Ave. Construction on the main building still used, seen here, began in September 1923.
Outside, the school’s mascot badgers hold court on the façade. 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.
It’s the kind of sight movie scenes are made of.
In fact, a movie was made at Tucson High, starring Patrick Dempsey and Amanda Peterson. Can’t 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 Garcia’s own.
Towards the beginning of her time as Tucson High curator, Garcia was going through documents preserved by her predecessor.
“I was going through her drawers of stuff and all of the sudden, there’s my grandfather, facing me.”
Through her work, Garcia has seen hundreds of other Tucson High students‘ memories. There are thousands of photos of a rodeo queen, snarky between-friends messages scribbled in yearbooks and aged photos of Tucson High’s construction.
The building is indeed old, Garcia said. “Updates need to be made. But ... everything is still here.”
Tucson High Badger Foundation wants to honor more veterans with engraved bricks
