Digital Bob Archive

A good deal of ceremony accompanied the construction and opening of the new Juneau Public School in 1917. There was a formal, full scale cornerstone laying, supervised by the local Masonic Lodge, on June 5. A special feature was a sealed copper box which was cemented into the cornerstone itself and contained, according to the press report, a history of Juneau to that date, a history of Juneau's public schools, a history of the Masonic fraternity of Juneau, a Holy Bible, a copy of the most recent Report of the Governor, current newspapers, and other documents.

One wonders what happened to the box and its contents when the walls of the building were razed in July, 1972, after it had been gutted by fire the previous February.

The formal dedication of the new building was held on October 12, 1917, and Superintendent Arthur H. Mathews took that occasion to announce a reorganization of the school on the junior high school plan. The junior high, comprising the 7th, 8th and 9th grades, would have its own assembly room and study hall, separate from the senior high school. There were six grade school teachers and nine teachers for the junior high and high schools.

For the first time the high school was able to offer a full domestic science program. When the new building opened, the manual training shop had not yet been fitted up, but it was ready before long and that course was also offered. The new building also had two science laboratories, a music room for the band and orchestra, and a gymnasium with lockers and dressing rooms. All in all, it was pronounced the finest school building in Alaska and Juneau was proud of it.

The new building was projected to fill the school needs of Juneau for 20 years, but that was not to be. The town was growing rapidly. In 1910 the population was 1,644; by 1920 it had grown to 3,058 and by 1929 it was 4,043.

School enrollment not only kept pace, it fairly leaped ahead. In the school year 1918-19, the second year the new Fifth Street School was open, the average daily attendance was 252, including grades, junior high and high school. The total rose to 331 for the 1922-23 school year, and that was the nominal, comfortable capacity of the building. But by the school year 1926-27 the average daily attendance was 430, which filled the building to its utmost capacity.

One result of the overcrowding was that the junior high school went by the board with the 1923-24 school year and that experiment was not renewed until the Marie Drake Junior High was built several decades later. With the 1923-24 school year the Juneau High School had a freshman class again and a full four-year course of study. It was time to think about a separate high school building.

A site for the new building was one of the problems and a special selection committee went to work on that. About the same time Alaska's Delegate in Congress began pushing a bill to permit the City of Juneau to issue $100,000 in General Obligation Bonds.