Former School Building in WI was Demolished in 1995

Mukwonago High School, Mukwonago Wisconsin

Date added: May 25, 2024

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Washington Avenue School was Mukwonago's first high school building.

Both the original 1900 structure and the 1934 classroom/gymnasium addition are inextricably linked to statewide patterns related to the creation and expansion of public high schools. By the late nineteenth century the state's Free High School Law of 1875 began to exhibit a pronounced influence on the number of secondary schools being constructed in Wisconsin. After receiving an initial sluggish response, the law gradually supplied the impetus to increase the number of public high schools from slightly more than 100 in 1880 to 209 by 1900. It offered the enticement of state funding support, which provided one-half of the cost of educational instruction up to $500 per high school. This outside source of financial support greatly improved a community's ability to afford a high school. In addition the Free High School Law established the potential for a school district to supply itself with unlimited numbers of qualified teachers from among its own graduates.

The late nineteenth century establishment of secondary education in Waukesha County has been identified as the premier advancement associated with the area's educational evolution. In 1898 the Mukwonago School Board initiated a two year high school course that was upgraded once the new building became available. When it opened its doors in September, 1900, the village high school counted itself as one of four in Waukesha County. It attracted students from the surrounding southern townships who were not accessible to the Waukesha, Oconomowoc, or Pewaukee high schools. In several years Menomonee Falls became the fifth county community to erect a high school facility.

With the promise of state funding came an obligation to surrender some local control over a school's curricula and to adhere to state-administered health and safety codes. In effect, this worked to professionalize education within the state's public high schools. In the classroom, this meant broader curricula offerings and standardized graduation examinations. Following its completion, Mukwonago High School added Botany (1901), Agriculture (1911), and Home Economics (1915) to its expanded classroom curricula. Students in the latter course immediately gained practical experience by producing Waukesha County's first school hot lunch program in 1915. Among the school's new facilities which immediately contributed to an enhanced educational experience were a library and science laboratory. At this same time, the high school began sponsoring athletic teams that competed in baseball and football against other county high schools. These team activities offered their participants with new opportunities for organized exercise and self-improvement. They also served as community events where local appeal extended beyond the student body. In 1911 village residents cheered on the high school baseball team all the way to the state championship game.

Because of their ability to quantify achievement levels graduation examinations administered by the state, through the county school superintendent, encouraged schools to adhere to standardized, but expanded curricula. The Mukwonago Chief regularly reported the local Spring exam schedule and the success rate of the community's scholars. In May, 1899, 40 of 43 students passed the examination for the high school. The paper noted that Inspector Parker from Madison was expected to visit following the exams. The exams had been administered a week later than anticipated because the test questions had not arrived on schedule.

The movement to professionalize state secondary schools eventually served to elevate the performance and status of teachers. Several months after it opened the doors of its modern and convenient high school, the community hosted the Teachers Institute. All county teachers were encouraged to attend as were citizens and school patrons. To those in attendance, the Institute offered a model class exercise and the opportunity for county educators to discuss "a number of questions of vital importance in school work." The Teachers' Institute combined with regular visits from the county and state superintendents to provide increased outside exposure for the local teachers, the new high school building, and the community itself.

During the early decades of the twentieth century as public high schools became more numerous and public education more professionalized, communities adjusted their philosophies toward school attendance. In his 1926 analysis of the state's public high schools Joseph Schafer noted that "the time appears to be at hand when all who enter the first grade will be expected to complete the twelfth." The adherence to this philosophy and the growing importance of education in general was reflected in the increased post-World War I enrollment in schools.

Another element emerging in the 1920s which stimulated public education was federal funding support. This legislation furnished monies to schools as incentives for continued improvements. Consequently, many Waukesha County schools engaged in building and remodeling programs during the 1920s. Hartland, Pewaukee, and Waukesha all constructed new high schools for their students. This building campaign maintained itself as late as 1929 and early 1930.

Initial planning for Mukwonago High School's classroom and gymnasium addition began during the late 1920s. Although classroom crowding was an issue of concern to the School Board so was the absence of a gymnasium. Physical education classes were now mandatory so as to encourage lifetime fitness among students. Without a gymnasium, Mukwonago students had limited opportunities for year-round physical education. The Mukwonago Chief strongly supported the gymnasium project. The Chief complained that Mukwonago was the only high school in the 438-member WIAA with an enrollment of 50 without a basketball team. Later the paper argued that the absence of a gymnasium was discouraging some students from attending Mukwonago High School because it was not meeting its educational competition.

During the six-month period when the addition was finally constructed, schools throughout Wisconsin were using projects of this type to relieve the local unemployment situation. By early 1934 the Chief reported that nearly 3,000 Wisconsin school buildings had been "slicked up" with Civil Works Administration funding aimed at curbing Depression-era joblessness. In his Annual Report, Waukesha County School Superintendent, Arthur Tews commented that school repairs and modifications of all kinds occurred during late 1933 and early 1934 to combat unemployment. A year later Tews expressed his frustration over federal aid to county education as being burdened with much administration and unexplainable delays. However, he complimented: county residents on their unselfish contribution of time and labor in undertaking and maintaining school improvement projects. The expansion of Mukwonago High School clearly typified the manner in which communities and school boards commonly dealt with local education issues during the Depression.

When Mukwonago High School opened in September, 1934, its newly expanded educational programs and facilities welcomed 132 students. The enhanced curricula and commodious, well-lighted classrooms also served 14 post-graduate students. These returning students availed themselves to the new Commercial course. Typing and Bookkeeping proved to be among the most popular of the new offerings. Band members enjoyed the basement rehearsal room and the spacious gymnasium stage for their concert performances. The enlarged high school faculty of seven supplied instruction in the more traditional subjects of History, Science, Math, and English. However, Business Administration, Manual Arts, Music, French, Commercial, Agriculture, Home Economics, and Physical Education classes also broadened the students' horizons.

An impressive photographic image of the enlarged Mukwonago High School appeared with the County School Superintendent's Annual Report to the Waukesha County Board of Supervisors in 1935. This type of public exposure and other numerous forms of publicity quickly propelled the high school into a new status. In the minds of many local residents, the high school now assumed a role that extended beyond its primary function as an educational institution. The expansive stately structure became the village's most visible and formal institution.

Besides representing the community's response to overall advancements occurring within the state's public education system, the high school's construction and subsequent enlargement attested to the local economic conditions as well as to community growth patterns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The progressive spirit displayed by the School Board in pursuing a new high school seems to have permeated various aspects of village life during the final decade of the nineteenth century. This spirit was reflected in and to some extent generated by the widespread economic prosperity being enjoyed by village residents. Local businesses prospered as the 1886 arrival of the Wisconsin Central Railroad brought seasonal visitors to village hotels as well as to the larger resort hotels on Phantom, Eagle Springs, and Beulah Lakes.

It supplied additional economic stimulation by transforming the village into an active livestock shipping center offering area farmers with a direct conduit to urban markets. On the domestic scene, this decade witnessed the construction of many stylish Victorian homes, particularly on the newly subdivided north side. It was this same neighborhood that the School Board chose for the high school, believing that the location was not only more convenient for students, but also more conducive to the practices associated with obtaining a sound education. It was within this economic and physical environment that local voters chose to place Chicago architect Sidney Lovell's impressive new school building.

Again in the late 1920s, the growing student population and the local economy proved to be significant influences when high school expansion became a key issue. Unfortunately for School Board planners, this rise in enrollment did not coincide with a period of unprecedented village prosperity as it had in 1900. In fact, the project's potential to rescue the local economy seems to have been as critical a consideration as the need to provide improved educational programs to an expanding community.

By September, 1933, when action was finally taken by the School Board, the Depression had a firm grip on Mukwonago. The community looked to the National Recovery Administration for federal programs to soften the Depression's impact. The original high school expansion funding proposal anticipated a gift from the Federal Relief Fund covering 30% of the project's cost. An additional loan from the state at 4% was also part of the plan's financial program.

The Mukwonago Chief encouraged the School Board to "pursue federal support before it vanished and then later be faced with a mandate from Madison to build a new school." It further noted that the high school project could supply employment to local firms and individuals, thereby reducing local unemployment during the upcoming fall and winter months. The original high school expansion funding source proposal was eventually modified so as to "eliminate federal red tape." However, the plan to utilize the local labor force did not change. Grants from the Civil Works Administration supported the village laborers on the modifications to the original high school structures and improvements to the surrounding grounds.

These occurred while the addition was being constructed during late 1933 and early 1934. The village also applied funding from this source of federal support to an extensive program of "park and lake front beautification."

Although the CWA program disappeared by April, 1934, it had accomplished much in the way of physically upgrading the village. But more important, it stimulated the economy by patronizing local businesses and keeping village residents at work during these years of debilitating unemployment. These conditions and circumstances contrasted sharply with those associated with the prosperity being experienced in 1900.

Building Description

The school sits on the northwest corner of Washington Avenue and Division Street. It remains joined with the first high school athletic field, now a community playground. With the playground and the three supplementary structures north of the school, the property consumes most of the block bounded by Washington (South), Division (East), Park (North), and Franklin (West).

The Washington Avenue School is situated in a residential neighborhood several blocks north of the village's original business district. The area compatibly blends examples of late Victorian influences, twentieth-century Four-Squares, and a 1926 Mission-style Catholic Church.

Although it has not functioned as a school since the early 1980s or as a high school since the mid-1950s, the structure has retained its tie to the Mukwonago Area School District. Presently, it houses the district's media center and curriculum offices. It also provides a significant amount of storage space for surplus classroom equipment, athletic gear, and printing materials. One former classroom accommodates the Mukwonago Food Pantry.

Besides the adjoining playground with baseball diamonds and basketball courts, the school's exterior environs include two detached auxiliary classrooms and a sizable metal storage shed. One of the classrooms (ca. 1955) is constructed of cement block. It shares a convenient location to the school's rear door with a portable metal-sided classroom (ca. 1970). The metal storage shed represents the most recent phase of site development, as it is linked to the period when the district began using the property as a central maintenance headquarters.

The property was transferred to the Village of Mukwonago. The local Library Board has publicly stated that it intends to demolish the entire structure and use the site for a new library building.

The school was demolished in 1995.

As Mukwonago's first high school, the Washington Avenue School represents two distinctively different architectural styles and construction phases. These styles attest to the varying nature of the local economy during their respective periods of construction. The incorporation of these styles into the high school building reflects the community's response to the issues of enhanced secondary education, desired extracurricular enrichment, available state and federal funding support, and escalating local joblessness.

According to the Mukwonago Chief, the original structure, erected during the summer of 1900, measured 51'10" by 72'8". It was the product of Chicago architect Sidney Lovell of the firm Lovell and Camp; who had joined the growing number of summer vacationers frequenting the area's lakes. Lovell's plans called for a formidable edifice constructed of brick and deemed modern and secure in every way. A year later he designed a second local landmark, the Citizens Bank building.

Lovell's two-story school building featured solid brick walls resting atop a granite rock foundation that extended seven feet above the surface. Above ground, the granite boulders were split to create an exterior surface rich in color and texture. The Mukwonago Chief reported that local masons, "F. Hillier and A. Ebert," utilized an estimated sixty cords of stone in fashioning the foundation. The workmen then capped the split-granite foundation wall with a five inch sill of sandstone before laying the base course of brick. By mid-June, the first of 90,000 Chicago brick arrived at the Wisconsin Central Depot. Local teamsters, Robert Durand and Silas Brooks, secured the contract for hauling the brick to the school site. The Chicago brick was supplemented with a light-cream-colored Burlington brick. The Burlington brick, laid up in a stretcher bond, was used in all exterior walls.

Lovell's plan called for a highly symmetrical design, characterized by carefully positioned window openings, doorways, porches, and rooflines. The first-floor facade featured four rectangular oversized classroom windows with double-hung sashes. The upper sash was neatly divided into fifteen panes, each 9" by 16". Panes were arranged in three horizontal rows with five panes per row. On the first floor, classroom windows were flanked by a smaller window opening capped with a round arch constructed of brick headers. All six openings rested on the sandstone sill that separated the two upper brick stories from the split granite foundation wall that enclosed the basement. The decorative foundation wall included four window openings positioned directly below those on the first floor. These matched the location and width of the upper sashes. This pattern of four symmetrically positioned window openings was extended to the upper story where quadruple window openings capped the front facade. A hip roof with polygonal-shaped belfry originally covered the central classrooms.

Symmetrically-positioned brick pavilions enclosed the main classrooms on the east and west walls. These appendages provided double door access to each end of the building. Identical exterior staircases and porches led to the front doors and contributed to the design's overall symmetry. Students entered through either set of front doors originally and passed underneath a four inch raised arch of contrasting red brick which outlined the perimeter of the door opening. Both arches enclosed a raised circular form constructed of matching material and positioned directly over the doors. Historical images show the flanking brick extremities to have been covered by extensions of the main roof and highlighted with a full entablature. At both east and west ends, porches and staircases leading to the double front entrances also sheltered steps descending to' the basement level.

Lovell carried the front elevation's decorative foundation wall and symmetrical character to the rear wall where four identical rectangular window openings were flanked by a single arched opening on the first floor level. Directly above were four primary second story windows which matched in design those positioned below. Two smaller upper level openings, one which now leads to an exterior fire escape, may have been added later. Original end walls were also supported by the split granite foundation upon which rested three windows, all consistent with primary openings on the front and rear elevations. Only the west end wall remains exposed. Its second story included two smaller windows placed directly above the outer openings of the first floor. Their upper sash consisted of only ten lights instead of the fifteen found on the primary windows.

The Mukwonago Chief credited local craftsmen with completion of the interior work. Will Vick, among the most prominent of the community's builders, performed the carpentry. Vick's material was supplied by Mukwonago's Heddles Lumber Company which according to the paper had under-bid several large Chicago dealers and northern manufacturers. By the end of August the Hillier Brothers' plastering work completed the project in time for the September 13^th dedication ceremonies. Completed at a cost of $8,000 with bonds purchased by the Citizens Bank of Mukwonago at 3 and 1/2 per cent, the first Mukwonago High School largely retained its original 1900 form until 1934. At that time a significant addition was approved and constructed by local residents.

Although the 125 foot matching brick addition did not become a reality until 1934, construction plans had been prepared five years earlier according to the Chief. The paper reported that in the Fall of 1933 that the "state education department" had been approached to discuss methods of dealing with the overcrowded classrooms and general congestion at the high school. Sources of outside financial support were among the other topics discussed with state officials.

The substantial addition more than doubled the length of the school as it made the building more "educationally competitive" with other surrounding high schools. The plan orchestrated by Waukesha architect Sylvester Synder included classrooms; a gymnasium, and stage. Attached to the eastern end of the school, the new section provided a formal central entrance which eliminated the building's original east wall, porch, and exterior steps. Local workmen attempted to aesthetically blend the two story addition with the original classrooms despite the new section lacking the architectural substance of Lovell's 1900 design.

Plans called for three additional classrooms and an office to be constructed on the west end of the 1934 project. This placed them adjacent to the existing classrooms on both the first and second levels.

Here they shared a common hallway and interior staircase with the original classrooms. A series of ribbon windows with four contiguous panes supplied natural light to each classroom.

The gymnasium and stage with a full basement below comprised the eastern one-half of the school. Solid brick walls extended full length from the surface to the roof level. On the gymnasium's north and south sides the longitudinal brick walls were interrupted by the placement of quadruple sets of tri-sectioned elongated windows. These units stretched vertically approximately three-quarters of the wall height and were capped with a smaller individual pane. Each unit was separated from the next by raised vertical brick bands, each 29 inches in width. The bands extended the width of one brick away from the wall and were positioned equidistance between the four window units. Masons used a similar technique on the school's new east wall. Here they accentuated the structure's height and minimized the large expanse of windowless wall by incorporating vertical patterns of rectangles, a single brick wide. This pattern was bent around the building's corners to include an additional design on the front and rear walls that enclosed the stage portion of the gymnasium addition.

Although the addition was covered with a flat roof, the section above the new classrooms extended approximately three feet higher than that over the gymnasium. To maintain the roofline of the new classrooms with that of the originals, masons laboring in 1934 as a part of the federally-funded Civil Works Administration program, heightened the original brick walls. Approximately twenty-five courses of brick were added on both the south and north walls. The shorter west wall received an even greater adjustment to raise it to the same height. This extension of the parapet was performed in conjunction with a reroofing to make "the whole a harmonious unit."

All modifications to the original structure to assure this harmony were covered by $3,600 of CWA funding.

Total cost of the new addition came to $25,000 with bonds issued for $17,500 and the difference of $7,500 being furnished through the School Board's treasury. Because of the 1930s' dire employment conditions, the School Board hired all local laborers to undertake the project. After filing applications, workers were assigned and scheduled. Those performing skilled tasks received 52 and 1/2 cents per hour. Unskilled jobs paid 32 and 1/2 cents per hour.

Ground breaking occurred in late November, 1933. The subsequent mild winter allowed for continuous construction through the Spring of 1934. When funding expired in April, just as the building was being completed, 28 local laborers signed a pledge of loyalty to donate their time and skills so that the gymnasium might be plastered and the addition finished on schedule without increased costs. The gymnasium hosted its first event, an alumni dance, in early June. Formal dedication ceremonies occurred in September after Mukwonago High School Spend its doors to 132 regular students and 14 post-graduate students.