The Place:
The original high school, designed by Fargo, ND's George Hancock, consisted of the three story brick schoolhouse. It is the sole remaining pre-depression era school building in Bozeman. Though expanded in 1912, by 1936 the school had become very much too small for the student population, necessitating the addition of much larger facilities. These were funded by the WPA, in part because a U.S. Senator happened to live in the city and partly because a powerful group of civic minded businessmen also happened to live in the city.
Today the school consists of only the Art Deco 1930s building as the original building was recently retired from active duty. Following attempts to finance its renovation by historic preservationists, the building was purchased by developer
Bridger Builders in 2013 and converted to condos.
Gallatin County High School
The eastern portion of the Gallatin County High School building is historically significant as the only remaining school in Bozeman that dates from before the Great Depression, when WPA funding was used to replace, or, in this case, add on to, the several school buildings that had been built around the turn of the century or earlier. Despite the enclosure of most windows with insulating material and removal (or covering) of the original sash, the building is nevertheless an architectural monument of major importance in the city.
Romanesque style elements were combined with a classical building form - a main block with flanking pedimented pavilions - for an impressive effect. The building was erected in 1902 after passage of the "County Free High School" measure, which provided for free high school level education throughout Gallatin County. It is therefore of regional significance.
In 1936-7, a major addition that doubled the size of the Gallatin County High School building was built using WPA funding. This High School addition was one of the four, federally financed public schools building projects undertaken in Bozeman during the Great Depression. The presence of Zales Ecton, a U.S. Senator from Bozeman in the 1930's, may have influenced the considerable flow of money to the city. Another influence may have been a powerful group of Bozeman businessmen which had formed to promote the city's interests. Prominent names such as Graff, Kenyon, and Chambers dominated the group.
This addition to the west of the original 1902 school is one of the most impressive structures in Bozeman, and is one of three outstanding examples of the Art Deco style in the city. The addition was designed by Fred F. Willson, and is prominently located on West Main Street, across the street from another large Art Deco style building which was also designed by Willson, the Gallatin County Courthouse (see Inventory #1).
The building was renamed the Willson School following the death of architect Fred Willson in 1956.
A 1942 Chamber of Commerce brochure described the four new schools as "...modern teaching units, providing for each classroom an additional project room where the students carry on handwork, build and exhibit displays, and otherwise train their hands to carry out the plans their heads conceive. Each of the schools is also provided with a combination gymnasium-auditorium."
From the NRHP Continuation Sheet
The Person:
The only real choice of architect for the project was one Fred F. Willson, far and away the most prolific Bozeman architect of the twentieth century. Willson had, by that time, already designed nearly all of the major (and a great many of the minor) buildings in the town. Choosing Art Deco as the style for the building, Willson made this the second of three major Art Deco buildings in Bozeman, all three his designs. The first, the 1936 Gallatin County Courthouse, is just across the street. The third, the Bozeman Armory, would appear in 1941-42, immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. When Willson passed away in 1956 the school was renamed in his honour and was converted to a middle school.
Fred Fielding Willson(1877 – 1956) was an architect who definitely left his mark in Montana. Exhibiting an eclectic style as the result of studying the architecture of Europe, he earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Columbia University in 1902 and then spent two years traveling throughout Europe and taking classes in Paris at Ecole des Beaux Arts. From Georgian and Mission Revival to Art Deco and Craftsman, Willson was involved with more than 1,050 projects, from elaborate homes, modest bungalows and efficient apartment buildings to all of Bozeman’s older schools (Emerson, Willson (named in his honour), Longfellow, Hawthorne, Irving and the original part of the high school. Willson also had a hand in the Armory, Baxter Hotel, County Courthouse, Pioneer Museum (formerly the jail), Ellen Theatre and several dorms, student union building and fieldhouse on MSU’s campus.
Further afield, he designed buildings in West Yellowstone and Anaconda that we know of, and certainly many more.