After several years of controversy over politics, design, location and funding, Harrisburg's William Penn High School opened at Third and Division streets in September 1926. Last month, Harrisburg School District receiver Lori Suski approved a $6.8 million proposal from the Gordian GroupResidents, school board members and alumni spoke at a meeting last month in favor of keeping the building, but renovations would have cost $40 million to $90 million, Suski said.
To help alleviate the congestion, the school district started moving Central boys to the all-boys Tech in 1917, segregating all high-schoolers by gender for the first time since Central opened in 1893. Students at each high school also were divided into two groups and went to school in shifts, and teachers had to work longer hours.
The GOP-dominated school board had enlisted Republican Lloyd to design all but one school since 1896. McCormick, a Democrat, sensed corruption.But in the case of William Penn, perhaps the design was a little too interesting. Lloyd’s plans, approved by the board in 1921, would cost $2 million that the district didn’t have.
Of course, throughout the controversy, the overcrowding continued. For two years before the rest of William Penn was completed, 10th- and 11th-grade Central High girls used the shop buildings — “with their pine-block floor, pasteboard partitions and windows that you could not see out of,” one student recounted in William Penn’s 1927 yearbook — as temporary classrooms.The high schools, each of which could accommodate 1,500 students, opened in September 1926.
The construction of William Penn High School helped spark development in uptown in the 1920s. One example is Italian Lake Park, shown in the foreground around 1930.
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