Architecture
The original school building was constructed 1907 in a Norman Romanesque style designed by Board of Education Architect Lloyd Titus. Two additions and main building had an exterior grey stone facade.
Student capacity was three hundred fifty boy students. It expanded in 1914 for more boy students and a duplicate structure built for a new Girls' School with a passage connecting the two buildings that was referred to as "The Tunnel". In 1941 an open field located seven blocks south at 10th and Bigler streets was purchased by a student fund raising and added to the school property as an athletic field to enhance the athletic program. The field was competely renovated in 2008 by the School District of Philadelphia as a supercomplex for larger District-wide events. The original School of 1907 was demolished in 1955.
A new rectangular shaped building was constructed and opened in 1956 on half of the site. The single building was built as a co-ed facility. The frontage included a new grand sized patio plaza entrance, large ashalpted school yard and significant green space enclosed with a regal looking four foot black iron railing tipped in gold painted points. The modern architecture style utilized interior walls of cinder block, cement flooring and staircases, with a facade of light colored tan brick and large glavanized steel metal framed classroom windows. It contained four stories of 190 classrooms with an all modern infra-structure, a large gymnasium, auditorium and lunchroom with 1,500 seats.
Read more about this topic: South Philadelphia High School
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
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