The wonderful Gothic Revival Topeka High School made jaws drop in 1930 not only with its H-U-G-E price tag, but also its impressive beauty, undiminished all these years later.
From the Kansas Historical Society website: (
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Topeka High School at 800 SW 10th St . . . was designed by architects Thomas Williamson and Ted Greist and completed in 1931. The building features a 155 foot bell tower and many architectural elements copied from Hampton Court Palace located near London, England. Topeka High School was the first million dollar high school built west of the Mississippi River." [end]
Here is a link to the National Register nomination form for Topeka High School: (
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A newspaper story in the local Topeka Capital-Journal gives some insight into the history and future of the school: (
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Topeka High School: Landmark testimony to history
City's oldest high school, which opened in 1931, is a window to the past
Posted: Sunday, August 10, 2003
By By Fredrick J. Johnson
The Capital-Journal
Freshmen entering Topeka High School for the fall 2003 semester might want to take a quick tour of the Hall of Fame gallery on the second floor just below the bell tower.
Many of the former students pictured on the walls there walked the same corridors students now tread as they move to and from classes. And some of today's students almost certainly one day will be inducted into that Hall of Fame.
Topeka High School, 800 S.W. 10th, was built at a cost of $1.75 million to the city's taxpayers. The school opened in September 1931.
Since the building, at 800 S.W. 10th, opened its doors to students for the fall 1931 semester, it has produced noted educators and writers, businessmen and scientists, athletes and coaches, lawyers and justices and generals and psychiatrists.
It is an impressive list of graduates, benefiting a school designed to be impressive itself.
Topekans in 1928 voted to issue $1.1 million in bonds to build a new, centrally located high school. The school board hired Thomas W. Williamson's architectural firm to design the building, and construction started in February 1930. The job was finished in 18 months, and Topeka High School opened its current home in September 1931.
What the voters received for their money that fall -- about $1.75 million after all site costs, equipment and furnishings were calculated -- was a stunning, three-story Gothic building of almost 278,000 square feet. Within that space, in addition to classrooms, were a 165-foot-tall bell tower, multiple stained-glass windows, a gymnasium that seated 4,000, a swimming pool a floor beneath the gymnasium and an auditorium -- illuminated by 10 chandeliers -- that seated 2,400.
The new high school also featured a library with a main reading room measuring 40 feet by 80 feet, a working fireplace -- one of four in the building -- and a large cafeteria with wood beams, chandeliers and a fireplace. There was a separate faculty dining room.
The main hall and stairwells were lined with marble from a Tennessee quarry, and floors in the halls, library and other areas were covered with squares of alternate light and dark tile. Other floors were carpeted or covered with different tile.
It was a striking change in terms of space, function and aesthetics from the buildings on the northwest and southwest corners of 8th and Harrison, which had housed the high school since the 1890s.
Architect Thomas Williamson wrote in the early 1970s for Topeka Magazine that the school had been built to endure.
The Topeka High School gymnasium, which seats 4,000, is one of the oldest and largest high school gyms in Kansas. A swimming pool, located a floor beneath the gymnasium, is where male students in the 1960s swam wearing only bathing caps.
"One cannot help being proud of the building as it stands today, a monument to good construction, with a beautiful design as well," Williamson wrote. "Due to the skillful and sound engineering, the building is as sound structurally as the day it was completed. The exterior has been recently pointed up and cleaned and is good for another half-century.
"Due to changes in curriculum, most of the classroom and laboratory arrangement and equipment is obsolete and, each year, the Board is gradually making changes in room arrangement and adding more modern equipment. When this work is completed, the building will be in good shape to turn out forty or fifty more graduating classes."
Joan Barker, administrative secretary for the THS Historical Society and a THS Class of 1971 graduate, notes that after its construction, the building was the only high school in Topeka for several years.
Highland Park High School was built about 1950, when the area outside the city had its own school district. The area and school district were annexed in the late 1950s. Topeka West High School, on Fairlawn Road, opened in 1961.
Douglass Wallace, a Topeka historian and a THS Class of 1965 graduate, credits Chester Woodward for the building's Gothic architecture. Woodward served as Topeka Board of Education president during the planning stages for the school and had built a Tudor mansion at 1272 Fillmore during the early 1920s. The home now is a bed and breakfast and is known as the Woodward House.
Other board members "acquiesced" to Woodward's vision for the new Topeka High School, said Wallace, who in 1999 edited the fourth and most-recent history and guide to Topeka High School.
Bound volumes of National Geographic magazine, some dated 1915, can be found in the Topeka High School library. The library also houses one of the school's four working fireplaces.
The first guide was published in 1981, and a 1986 edition was edited by Judy Cromwell, a THS history professor. A third edition was published by the THS Historical Society in 1991.
Wallace also debunked the once widely-held belief in Topeka that the current Topeka High School was the nation's first $1 million school. His research, reported in The Topeka Capital-Journal on Jan. 7, 1988, showed several $1 million schools had been built more than a decade before the Topeka High project was approved, including Wichita North High School in 1929 at just more than $1 million.
Regardless, the building has weathered well. The only major structural difference in the building today is the addition of a greenhouse built in the late 1970s, Wallace and Barker said during a recent tour of the school.
Some of the doors and windows have been replaced, they said, as have the floor coverings in parts of the building, including the Hall of Fame room and library, which have been carpeted.
Barker said the stained-glass windows in several rooms are being restored as money becomes available because the metal segments have weakened over the years and much of the glass is loose. The THS Historical Society is raising money for the project, and the school district is matching the society's contribution.
Wallace said the tile on the first floor had since been replaced, but the original tile still is in place on the second and third floors. And all the seats in the auditorium are original, he said, as are the chandeliers, although one had to be restored after it fell to the floor in 1994 when it was being cleaned.
The gymnasium looks much as it did when built, with the exception of the colors and addition of some banners on the wall. Wallace noted the swimming pool, where male students in his day used to swim wearing only bathing caps, was a floor directly beneath the gym.
Carpeting in the auditorium has been replaced twice, but the floor looks much as it did when the school first opened.
The original carpeting was a plush wool that eventually became so worn it had to be replaced. In the 1970s, Wallace said, some "God-awful" carpet that didn't do justice to the beautiful auditorium and mezzanine was put down. Fortunately, he said, that carpet eventually disintegrated, and when it needed to be replaced, the school district architect was able to find a company that could duplicate the color and pattern of the original.
The stained-glass windows in the school's library and other rooms are being restored because the metal segments have weakened and much of the glass is loose.
It is a synthetic, Wallace said, but students from the 1930s who return for a visit should recognize the pattern.
And plenty of students do return. A tour of the school is a featured event of many class reunions, said Barker, who in her role with the THSHS helps classes with reunion planning and tours.
Probably the largest gathering of THS graduates was on Oct. 18, 1997. During the 1996-97 school year, Topeka Unified School District 501 and Topeka High School celebrated the 125th anniversary of the establishment of the first Topeka High School in 1871 and concluded the year-long celebration with the "Ultimate Reunion." All living graduates with known addresses -- about 25,000 former students -- were invited to return for a day of events that included pep assemblies, a homecoming parade and dances.
Organizers said between 2,000 and 2,500 graduates attended, representing classes from 1922 to 1997. Many of the events were conducted at the high school, and the day ended with the illumination of 37,000 lights that had been strung on the bell tower, one for each graduate since the school was established in 1871."