A High-School Building of the Early Type
A similar lesson may be drawn from the study of high-school buildings of successive generations. The following quotation from the Denver survey shows how limited was the earlier conception of the school and its doings.
The course of study in this school [the East Side High School] was from the first a rigorous, disciplinary course, dominated by literary and classical interests. The issue between science and the classics was clearly drawn even in the early years of the East Side High School’s history, but the victory has always been with the literary subjects....
The kind of a course of study which was thought of as necessary in those early days reflected itself in the kind of a building which was erected. The East Side High School building was, in its day, a conspicuous model of high-school architecture. The high ceilings and great corridors and large classrooms showed the generous intention of the citizens of Denver. There were, however, no gymnasium, no lunch room, no shop for manual training, and no special equipments for science courses. In short, the East Side High School stands as a conservative example of a school, strong in its early days, but unable in these days to take on the progressive features of a first-class high school because of physical limitations and because of the hampering traditions which come from a successful past.[31]