Washington High School was a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

Two Rivers, Wisconsin Two Rivers is a city in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 11,712 at the 2010 census. It is the birthplace of the ice cream sundae (though other cities, such as Ithaca, New York, make the same claim). The city's advert ...

History

The first public school in Two Rivers was built in 1866 for $5,000 at the site of the current city hall and named the H.P. Hamilton School. In 1905, it was moved to the back of the lot and a new, red brick high school was built for $80,000. It was also named the H.P. Hamilton School and would eventually become City Hall. Several years before the Community House renovation, the city debated tearing down that old building. They decided to do extensive remodeling instead. Today, the two buildings gaze upon one another across the historic Central Park. During the 1930s and 1940s, Washington High's facilities were used for summer training by a number of

professional football In professional sports, as opposed to amateur sports, participants receive payment for their performance. Professionalism in sport has come to the fore through a combination of developments. Mass media and increased leisure have brought larg ...

teams, including the

Philadelphia Eagles The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team plays ...

in 1941 and 1942, the

Pittsburgh Pirates The Pittsburgh Pirates are an American professional baseball team based in Pittsburgh. The Pirates compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. Founded as part of the American Associati ...

, the

Columbus Bullies The Columbus Bullies were a professional football team founded by Phil H. Bucklew in Columbus, Ohio in 1938. The Bullies started out as a member of the American Professional Football Association (APFA) in 1939. Later, in 1940, the Bullies joined ...

and the

Chicago Rockets The Chicago Rockets were an American football team that played in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) from 1946 to 1949. During the 1949 season, the team was known as the Chicago Hornets. Unlike the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, an ...

. In 1976, the Washington High chess team won the United States national high school chess tournament. They had won the Wisconsin high school championship for four years running. In April 2000, after a three-year battle, a referendum narrowly passed to demolish Washington and replace it with a new school, later named Two Rivers High School in 2002. Advocates of the demolition (including the school board) claimed that rehabilitation would be too expensive; Washington supporters claimed that the figures were being manipulated, and that the real goal was to move the high school to a more suburban setting ("a cornfield on the edge of town") outside the historical center of Two Rivers.

Notable alumni

Notable alumni include professional wrestler Ken Anderson, alias

Mr. Kennedy Kenneth Anderson (born March 6, 1976) is an American professional wrestler. Anderson is known for his tenure with WWE from 2005 to 2009 under the ring name Mr. Kennedy, and his work in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling as Mr. Anderson from 2010 to 2 ...

. The father of U.S. Senator

Thomas J. Walsh Thomas James Walsh (June 12, 1859March 2, 1933) was an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician from Helena, Montana who represented Montana in the US Senate from 1913 to 1933. He was initially elected by the state legislature, and from 1 ...

was in part responsible for the school being built, although the future Senator does not appear to have attended the school himself.

References

External links

1949 postcard of Washington High School from the State of Wisconsin Digital Collection
History of Wisconsin Schools in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin Defunct schools in Wisconsin {{Wisconsin-stub