Fifth Avenue High School is a defunct school located at 1800 Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Bluff neighborhood, USA.
Built in 1894 as a large Romanesque/Gothic Revival building, it served the Pittsburgh Public Schools until its closure in 1976. Since then the building has sat empty, boarded up and fenced off.
Fifth Avenue was the first fireproof school in Pennsylvania and was home to the Alpha Chapter of the National Honor Society. Its colors were red and white, and the mascot was the Archer, so chosen because of the school's architecture and hallways filled with Gothic and Victorian arches lined with red and white tile.
Fifth Avenue was a dominant force in city sports, winning the state title in its last year open for basketball. The school served the Lower Hill District, while its main rival, Schenley High School, served the upper and middle Hill.
The building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and was listed as a Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation landmark in 1998 and a City of Pittsburgh landmark in 1999.
The school is being converted into loft apartments by a Pittsburgh-based investor group. The project is expected to be completed by late 2012.
Among the school's notable alumni are former Mayor of Pittsburgh Sophie Masloff and forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, who served as Coroner (later Medical Examiner) and a Commissioner of Allegheny County.
Famous quotes containing the words avenue, high and/or school:
“I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)