The Sherman school, now privately owned, hosts tumbling, wrestling, and other sports. It is one of the oldest schools in the county and is still in its original form. When many of Butte-Silver-Bow’s older schools burned because of faulty wiring, an unattended boiler, got buried by dirt, or earthquake damage rendered them unsafe, this school remains in its original state.
The Sherman was built in Walkerville in 1902 to replace a burned one room schoolhouse originally known as the East Walkerville School. The name was changed to the Sherman by order of the Board of Education in 1896.
In later years, Daly Street became the school boundary line—those north of Daly attended Sherman and those who lived south of it attended Blaine. The Blaine school closed in 1963, with those students moving to the Sherman school. Even with the closure of the Blaine declining student population led to the school’s closure in 1978.
]]>The Butte Head Start Program, a federal program for preschool children from low-income families, is in the former Monroe School. The first building, originally called the South Butte School, was a three-story brick building on 1st Street dating to 1890. The name changed to the Monroe in 1896 and the building was enlarged in 1902. The Monroe School was rebuilt in 1958 at 1000 South Arizona Street and it closed in 1978.
]]>The Park Street Baptist Church is housed in the building that was originally the McKinley School, which closed in 1985. The first McKinley School was built in 1903 and destroyed by fire in 1919. Unlike most other schools destroyed or affected by fire, the McKinley was not immediately replaced due to lack of funds. For the next several years students were transferred to other schools in the area including Lincoln, Washington, and Garfield. Younger students were sent to area churches which offered rooms.
In 1926, the original stone foundation and first floor walls, which remained standing after the fire, were used to rebuild the structure, reopening for the 1928-1929 school year.
In 1969, when the Catholic elementary schools closed, many of the students affected by the closure went to McKinley and Lincoln schools and McKinley was considered one of the larger schools in the district. However, over the next 20 years the school’s population declined due to the opening of the junior high schools (East Junior High in 1957, and West Junior High in 1969), leading to its eventual closure.
]]>In 1891, Louis Smith, proprietor of the Centennial Brewery, offered to donate a 400-foot lot for a schoolhouse near the Colorado Smelter on Silver Bow Road. He also offered to build the school, allowing the school district to repay in monthly payments, but his offer was rejected.
The Boulevard School was finally built in 1896 in the yard of the Butte Reduction Works on South Montana. Maps show it on the corner of LaSalle and Franklin streets, now underneath the freeway. The one-story brick building included stoves and there were outhouse restrooms. About 135 students attended grades one through six.
Following a fire in 1916, architect Wellington Smith designed a new school building which opened at 2325 South Colorado Street in 1917. The school was renamed the Madison, and a new section was added in 1955. The school closed in 1979, and still stands as a private holding with the new address 101 Greenwood Ave.
]]>The Lincoln School was built in 1892 as a three-story brick building occupying the site of the current playground. It was originally called the West Broadway School and renamed the Lincoln in 1896.
The building was reconstructed in1958 on the playground of the existing school and opened in 1959. The old school was then demolished and made way for the new playground. In the early years it was considered one of the larger schools, but enrollment began to fall in the late 1950s and it was permanently closed as a school in 1979.
The building housed district offices and special classrooms throughout the 1980s and has been used for Head Start programs. It is now a private holding.
]]>The Hawthorne school is both historically and architecturally significant because it represents the early suburbanization of Butte. Near the turn-of-the century, the Tidewater Investment Company and its founder, Wallace White, began developing the Lake Avoca region south of Butte into an exclusive suburb. The extension of the streetcar line to the area after 1908-1909 and the relocation of the Butte Country Club to the lake front in 1909 increased the desirability to live in the suburbs. White placed restrictions on deeds, mandated the cost of residences, and established a tree nursery for the area. People soon began building homes in the subdivision known as Atherton Place-on-the-Lakes.
In 1914, realizing how popular the area was becoming and the need for a school, White deeded 2.87 acres of land in Atherton to the Butte School District. In 1917, the population of the area was large enough to warrant the construction of a new school, replacing a small wood-frame building housing just two teachers. The new building contained six classrooms arranged in a U-shape with the gymnasium located in the center of the U. Students occupied the new building in September 1917.
The Hawthorne School, as it was named, was an exact duplicate of the Longfellow School (closed in 2001 and eventually demolished). Two rear extensions were added to Hawthorne in 1958. Unlike the Longfellow where the additions were built at right angles to the main structure, the Hawthorne’s extensions radiate out from the central gymnasium giving the school a V shape.
Hawthorne closed in 1975 and now houses a dance school and a daycare.
]]>The original Blaine School was built in 1890 at 973 N. Main Street in Centerville. It was often referred to as the West Centerville School. The first permanent school in Butte was the Adams, also known as the East Centerville School; it housed students in grades 1-4. Students transferred to Blaine for grades 5-8. By 1903 the Adams school was closed, and Blaine was enlarged. The Blaine school closed in 1959 because of extensive earthquake damage and was eventually destroyed. Students were transferred temporarily to the Kennedy and Sherman Schools until the new school was finished in September of that year. The new Blaine, built across Bennett Street, is now in Walkerville.
New school boundaries were established in 1964 because of overcrowding. Students living north of Lexington Terrace went to Sherman School, while students living on Cora Terrace went to Blaine. Missoula Gulch became the Blaine’s western boundary. The south boundary followed the railroad tracks around to the Washington school line at Ruby Street.
The Blaine closed in 1982 and opened as Blaine Community Center in 1984, but is now closed to the public.
]]>In the early 1880s the Sisters of Mercy taught in Butte’s Catholic schools. When they departed, the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth stepped in. Although they were trained in hospital work, not education, they were determined to assume this new responsibility. They began teaching in 1887 in the basement of St. Patrick’s Church. Not long after this a school was built next to the Church, opening in 1893 and becoming the third parish with a high school, joining St. Lawrence and Sacred Heart.
In 1907, the parish priests and sisters of Butte, working with the bishop, decided to create a city-wide high school for boys and girls, eliminating the need for individual parish high schools. In 1908 the new Central Catholic High School opened in a building once owned and lived in by Marcus Daly, one of Butte’s three “Copper Kings,” on the corner of Montana and Quartz Streets.
In 1913, an addition to the structure was added to accommodate well over 400 students. Soon there were over 600 students, and the school couldn’t accept new applicants.
To increase capacity, the bishop decided to establish a separate school for the boys, to be taught by the Irish Christian Brothers. He proceeded with plans to build a new school on the corner of Idaho and Mercury Streets.
The Christian Brothers initially sent just four instructors, so only freshmen and sophomores were allowed to start at the new Boys’ Central High School in September 1924. It took four more years to accommodate all four grades.
In 1951, a new Girls’ Central High School building opened on the corner of Park and Idaho Streets. The beautiful structure was fully equipped including a full-sized gym with locker rooms and showers.
In 1967 the Butte Catholic community realized that there would soon be considerably fewer sisters to staff schools throughout the Diocese, including Butte, which had nine active parish grade schools in 1959. All the remaining Catholic grade schools in Butte were closed in 1969. That year Boys’ Central was also closed and consolidated with Girls’ Central, becoming the Central High School we know today.
The Butte Catholic School Board decided to reinstate elementary education in 1986. It marked the first time parochial education for all grades was offered in Butte since the grade schools closed in 1969. That fall there were over 100 students in grades 1-6, and nearly 500 in the junior and senior high schools. The old St. Joseph building at 1100 Delaware now hosts pre-school, kindergarten, elementary and junior high students.
]]>This building was originally the Webster Garfield Elementary school, built in 1948. It was significant as the first post-war school in Butte and the first school to embody modern planning and design principles.
The original Garfield school was condemned and demolished in 1942, with Webster school absorbing those students. In 1945 the Webster school was also condemned, and students divided among other area schools. Students from the Garfield and Webster schools returned to the new school in 1950. The school closed as an elementary school in 1985.
Now the Butte High Career Center, this building has all the same amenities that Butte High School has to offer—classrooms, gymnasium, auditorium, shop area, art classrooms, and Family and Consumer Sciences area—in a scaled back setting that helps to ensure student comfort and success. Students enrolled in the Butte High Career Center are held to the belief that all students can learn and all students can succeed. Students are prepared to enter the world with career skills that include strong communication and responsibility with a focus on being a productive, contributing member of the communities in which they will live.
]]>Butte’s first high school, the Central School, opened in 1884 on East Granite Street, east of Arizona. A trestle was built so students who lived on the east side of Dublin Gulch could cross the gulch to attend school. The first pupil graduated from this school in 1886. The building later became the Washington School.
In 1894 construction began on the new Butte High School on the corner of Galena and Idaho Streets. It was completed on December 12, 1896 and the first graduating class, 57 students, was in 1898. The building was completely destroyed by fire in 1946 while serving Webster Elementary students who had been displaced by a fire in their own building.
The site for the next new high school was on South Wyoming Street, the site of the current high school. Construction began in 1936, and the school opened in 1938 to 2,000 students. Although some minor updates were made to the structure, by 1965 the school was badly in need of major renovation.
The local fire department finally declared the school unsafe because of fire violations. Three safety studies were completed between 1965 and 1985, but no action was taken.
An initial bond proposal to bring the building up to code failed in 1986 but finally passed in 1988. Voters approved $11 million to begin the long overdue renovation, and the Urban Revitalization Agency contributed $5 million. The project was completed in 1996. A later renovation of Naranche Stadium was completed in 2011.
]]>East Middle School was built in 1957 and was originally designed as a junior high serving students in grades 7-9. In the late 1980’s, the junior high concept was transformed into a middle school model that serves students in grades 7 and 8. This model uses a team concept that groups both teachers and students into teams for the school year. Using this model, middle school promotes smaller learning communities, interdisciplinary learning, and cohesiveness among students. The middle school promotes literacy across the curriculum which creates lifelong learners. East is now the only middle school in the community.
In 2009 a $1.5 million renovation project changed the façade of the building with new windows and an entire new modern front.
]]>The seven room Wendell Phillips School was built in 1903. It served as a school for a number of years until it was enlarged and eventually used as the trade school for incorrigible boys.
The building became Whittier Elementary School in 1917, when a new trade school, the Cleveland School, was built.
On February 2, 1953, two Whittier students set fire to the building and destroyed it. Students were temporarily housed at the Civic Center on Harrison Ave; the 1953 8th grade class graduated from the Civic Center.
The school was rebuilt on the same site in 1954. In 1963 another new section was added. Today, Whittier remains an active public elementary school.
George Parrett served as the Whittier School principal from 1978-1998, and the park behind the school is named after him. Whittier’s gym, named for Kenneth Julson, principal from 1945-1968, at one time hosted all the city’s elementary basketball games due to the size and seating for spectators.
]]>West Elementary was built in 1969 to serve as a junior high for the students in Uptown Butte. With Butte facing school closures in the mid-1980’s, West was converted to an elementary school in 1986 when Butte adopted the middle school concept by moving 7th and 8th grade students to the now East Middle School.
]]>Margaret Leary Elementary School was constructed in 1973 when the “open-concept” philosophy dominated the educational world. Its original architectural design had large open spaces with moveable dividers. Over the years, Margaret Leary’s interior design evolved to a more traditional school with individual classrooms.
The school was named in honor of Margaret Leary, an icon in the Butte School District, starting as a stenographer in 1925, and retiring as the Financial Clerk in 1973. Her dedication, work ethic, and passion to education and the Butte School District remains the benchmark for “excellence.”
]]>Kennedy Elementary School is a treasured institution within the Butte community, as it is the last elementary school left on the “hill.” The community support for this school is overwhelming and its student success is celebrated not only by the families it serves, but also by the “old-timers,” the few remaining icons left from a proud mining generation.
Kennedy Elementary was built in 1958 and was originally named “The Big Butte School.” Initially the school was to have sixteen classrooms, but ultimately eight were planned and constructed. In 1963 the school name was changed to the John F. Kennedy Elementary School. At the dedication ceremony, Senator Mike Mansfield presented to Principal “Oakie” O’Connor the flag that flew at half-mast over the White House during the funeral of President Kennedy.
]]>Hillcrest Elementary was constructed in 1969 as the growing population on the “Flats” put demands on the existing schools.
The Hillcrest Hornets received their mascot after much debate with the 6th grade class. Unable to come to a conclusion on a mascot one of the “bigger” boys in class opened a window. A hornet flew in and stung the boy. The hornet caused a great deal of pain to which the principal, Mr. Sullivan, replied, “If a hornet can cause that much pain to a big kid, imagine how strong we would be if we adopted it for our mascot.” And so they became the Hillcrest Hornets.
Today, Hillcrest boasts a volunteer force of over 200 people who in addition to many events and tasks throughout the year also put on the Annual Hillcrest Bazaar.
]]>The original Emerson School was built on Garrison Ave. in 1901. It consisted of a brick building, heated by coal and wood stoves with windows in all four rooms and an outhouse. The highest enrollment in this little school was 180 “sittings” as it was called back then, which included the teachers.
In the late 1920s or early 1930s this building was replaced by three individual brick buildings on the same lot. One building faced Phillips Ave. and the other two faced Garrison Ave. These three buildings housed grades 1-8; a special reading teacher named Bess Stone who taught music, penmanship, diacritics, and art; and a large gym and auditorium which doubled as a library. It also housed woodworking and home economics classes. Kids from other schools walked to or were bussed to attend these special classes.
In 1956 a School District #1-appointed study group reported that the school presented serious problems in regard to increased enrollment and lack of sufficient ground for new construction. The school was drastically overcrowded, and the auditorium had been divided into two classrooms. The next year East Junior High would be taking some of the overload by absorbing the 7th and 8th grades, making four additional classrooms available, but the study group still recommended modernizing the present buildings and adding a multi-purpose room.
In 1957 the recommendations began to be implemented. The facility on Phillips Ave. (Section C), was torn down and replaced with a larger facility containing a gymnasium and stage area. This building had no connection to sections A and B so gym classes required the students to go outside and cross the playground, even in winter, to have gym class.
More renovations were undertaken in 1967. The two older buildings facing Garrison were replaced with what is now the main school building (Section A). The multi-purpose building now connects Sections A and the new Section B, housing the music room and the principal’s office.
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