In the attic of our barn we have eleven wooden seats that are from the tan-brick high school auditorium that stood over on East Union Street. I asked Marie Loyd O'Hara if she remembered when we had an assembly program and we rose to leave. She did remember and rightly called it a "clatter". She also remembered that they were not individual seats but fastened together in groups. This set me to investigate further.
If you, the reader, didn't attend classes in those bygone years, you may remember that there were two shades of tan bricks. The darker bricks on the western portion was erected first.
John Shaffer, the editor thought 1916 and I thought I'd heard 1914. I have the Sentinels that Harriet Doll saved and so I consulted 1914, 1915, and 1916.
Previous to those years, all grades, including high school, were held in the large red-brick school on the south side of East Union Street and west side of Minnequa Ave. As 1915 approached one of the classes would have 67 pupils, far too many for one room. The parents and whole community began to call for a new building to be built on the north side of Union Street where a vacant area was owned by the school board.
On being brought to a vote the citizens voted 307 yes and 70 no. A bond issue was taken for $30,000 and when put up for bids, of several respondents, the Crandall bid was accepted for $24,692. So 1915 was the year it was started.
The new building was not ready by September, so fourth grade met in the Gleckner barn, now our barn. And fifth grade met in the gymnasium of St. James Episcopal Chapel (now the senior center).
Of interest, the school board requested that the Niagara Express train which went north from Canton at 4:19 p.m.; stopped at Cowley at 4:27 so students could attend the new high school when it opened in January 1916. Must be the morning train arriving at Canton at 9 a.m. from the north already stopped at Cowley.
The formal high school dedication was held January 17, 1916. Crandall Brothers of Williamsport were the builders, and the school was designed by James Mill Platt of Rochester, NY. The principal was Everett Quakenbush.
The Auditorium could seat 540 people. The wooden chairs could be removed and then the auditorium could become a basketball court. That explains why the wooden seats were in groups and not single. They could more easily be removed.
The new school had three labs, biology, chemistry, and physics. A central clock in the office controlled all the classroom clocks. By a speaker system, the principal could speak to any or all the classrooms and labs. Quite a school for its day!