Wausau East High School - History

History

The first high school in Wausau was a two-room school house built in 1880 and occupied by multiple grades. When Washington School was erected as the high school in 1889 for $12,400, the city thought the school was too big. In 1897, when the school became overcrowded, five rooms in the court house were rented for classroom space. In 1898, a new high school was built at the cost of $65,000 by Van Ryn and DeGelleke of Milwaukee, on the corner of Seventh and Eighth streets. Far from the center of the city, many city residents complained that it was too distant from the city and still others thought it was too large. The school opened its doors in 1900. Charles C. Parlin, the school's first principal, served until 1911. That school became known as Wausau High School until 1936, when it became Wausau Senior High School. A final name change occurred in 1970, the last year Wausau had one high school. In 1971 two high schools served the Wausau School District, Wausau West High School, and now Wausau East High School.

In the early years, Wausau East housed two sections for seventh and eighth graders, kindergarten, and the Marathon County Normal School. The school taught subjects such as home economics, sciences, and social studies. Students who did not behave could be expelled and placed in vocational schools. There were no buses to transport students to school and few rural students attended. Students were required to dress formally, boys with short pants and ties, and girls in dresses that went to their knees.

The original school had an assembly room capable of holding 1,000 students. It was once said that students and teachers were proud of its angled floors, which gave them a good view of all activities on the stage.

During the Great Depression, with the help of the Works Progress Administration, the city expanded the 1898 building with a new three-story Victorian style addition facing Seventh and Hamilton Streets. There were three phases in the construction. The first phase, which began in 1934, included an addition that featured hand-crafted wall tiles, a large mural depicting lumberjacks cutting trees displayed in the main entrance and Art Moderne architectural motifs. It was designed by Oppenhamer & Opel, the architecture firm also responsible for the Grand Theatre. The building also contained a series of tunnels, which were used mainly for heating the building. This addition to Wausau High School opened in 1936.

The second phase began in the early 1950s, when E.H. Boettcher was the principal. It consisted of the construction of the theater, band, art, and social sciences classrooms. Underneath the theater was a nuclear fallout shelter. This phase was completed in 1954.

The last phase occurred in the 1960s, with the addition of the gymnasium and cafeteria. However, due to a lack of funds, the plan to demolish the 1898 structure and replace it with an identical extension of the 1936 phase was never put into action.

In 1979,under the principalship of John Crubaugh, the original 1898 building was demolished by Williams Wrecking of Wausau at a cost of $53,000 because officials thought that it was an unsafe structure. The lost classroom space was then replaced with portable classrooms until a two-story addition with a second floor library was constructed and opened in 1986. The new addition consisted of classroom space for special education, administrative offices, teacher offices, and science classrooms. During this time, Wausau East High School also went through extensive renovation, including lowering of the ceilings and dividing the old library into three discussion rooms and classrooms (primarily English Language Learner rooms).

Because of overcrowding at the aging high school in the late 1990s, the community began to discuss the school's future, debating whether the landlocked school should be expanded or converted into Horace Mann Middle School, allowing the middle school to be renovated into a high school. The option of building an entirely new high school was also discussed. In 1999, the voters of Wausau passed a referendum to construct a new high school, to be located on 18th Street, a site that had been proposed in the 1970s. The graduating class of 2004 was the last class to walk the halls of the old Wausau East High School. The new school opened its doors in September 2004. The former high school, owned by Stone House Development of Madison, Wisconsin, has been renovated into apartments for middle and lower income families. As part of an agreement with the school district and city, Stone House Development retained the building's character as a school. This included keeping the lockers, the hand-crafted tiles, and the window fixtures. Since 2002, the old school building has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The 1960 and 1986 additions have been demolished, and made into a parking lot for tenants of the complex. The site was recently further developed for townhouses and opened in September 2008. The future of the theater remains unknown.

In 2009 Wausau East High School received a grant from the Walter Alexander Foundation to support the education of renewable energy. This grant allowed for the installation of a Northern Power Systems 100kW wind turbine, along with a smaller 10kW and 2.9kW solar array. These power sources have been combined with classroom learning to allow students hands on access to next generation power.