PAST TIMES AT ... Palmer High/ School celebrates 125 years of

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Apr 17, 2001 by Matt Mayberry

In 1875, Colorado Springs was a young community. Just four years old, the tiny town offered dirt streets, a few trees hauled in from the Arkansas River Valley and mostly crude buildings.

But community leaders had big plans to attract people of wealth and social standing, and they knew they needed a strong school to attract and sustain a growing population.

They did their job well: The population is booming, and the public school system has boomed along with it. Colorado Springs is home to about half a dozen school districts that operate a dozen or so high schools - and more, if you include districts outside the city limits.

Only one high school, however, can trace its roots to those dirt roads and big-city dreams: Palmer High School. This month, the downtown fixture at Nevada and Platte avenues celebrates its 125th anniversary and a history of academic and athletic excellence with assemblies and events for students and alumni.

But why should anyone outside the Palmer community care? For one thing, says principal Jackie Provenzano, Palmer, along with nearby businesses and churches, has contributed to the vitality of the downtown area.

"The other part of it, I think, is that, when you think about Gen. Palmer, The Broadmoor and El Pomar and other organizations central to the development of this city, Palmer High School - a school that has served so many people and so many generations - is one of those key pieces of the history of our city," she says.

Extravagant beginnings

The first incarnation of Palmer opened in September 1875. Though small, temporary schoolrooms had been opened across town, the "Old Stone School" at the southeast corner of Bijou Street and Cascade Avenue was the first permanent school. Built at a cost of nearly $27,000, it was considered by many to be far too big and expensive. It was made of pure-white stone and was two stories high, topped by a clock tower that provided a bird's-eye view of the entire town. It housed grades first through 12th and was overcrowded within a year.

Like many of the town's early buildings, the school was short- lived. The first graduation ceremony took place in 1879. In January 1890, a fire caused by a defective furnace flue destroyed the school.

The school board was not exactly overcome with sorrow in the wake of the fire. A statement from the board noted that "grief at the loss of this old landmark is not quite so deep and heartfelt as it should be. It was old-fashioned and inconvenient, and there was a suspicion that its walls were not quite safe." For three years, until a new high school was finished, the city's teen-agers crowded together in the makeshift classrooms of the old Congregational Church just south of Acacia Park.

The next incarnation of Palmer was the elegant and imposing Colorado Springs High School, a 17-classroom building that opened in January 1893 at the current Palmer site. This Romanesque structure, built for $100,000, reflected the prominence and confidence of a 20- year-old city just beginning to reap the benefits of Cripple Creek gold.

Like the one it replaced, this school also featured an immense tower with a clock face on each side and a 2,800-pound brass bell that could be heard nearly everywhere in the city.

Some people feared the hourly chiming would hurt the city's reputation as a health resort by interrupting the rest of countless tuberculosis patients. Proponents countered that it would enforce punctuality and ease the "monotony of the hours in which a person lies awake unable to sleep."

Literary societies and music clubs were popular with the school's students, but athletics gave the school its identity. During the 1894 football season, the team drove its opposition from the field like "chaff before the wind." The community and opposing teams started calling them "holy terrors," and the nickname of "Terrors" stuck. The highlight of the school's football program came in 1923, when it won a national championship, defeating St. James High School in suburban Boston.

Girls' athletics were not as well organized or competitive. Their physical education classes took place separately from the boys, and they would often walk down the street to the YWCA building, since the school had no designated space for girls' exercise.

But other opportunities beckoned for young women. In 1927, a group of African-American girls formed the Howard Club, an organization devoted to the study of black authors.

New building, new name

Annexes were added to the grand old high school in 1913, 1920 and 1929 to make room for the growing student populations and expanding academic programs. By the time the last addition was added, the main building started showing its age. During a 1929 baccalaureate service in the auditorium, a skylight collapsed, slightly injuring a woman.

A growing, modern city needed a modern high school. In the late 1930s, the School Board took the recommendation of a Kansas City engineering firm and voted to demolish the 1892 schoolhouse. It was replaced with the building we know today. Edward Bunts, a 1921 graduate of CSHS, designed the simple, angular structure. At the time, the building was called "one of the West's most attractive architectural designs."