The first class to graduate from St. Mary High School was in 1901. The school’s first football team was formed in 1922, and the St. M’s basketball team won the State Class B championship in 1929. In 75 years of operation, St. Mary High School graduated 4,351 students.
The high school was located on Forge Street, between College and Union Streets, facing Union Park. The school was established in 1857, but the pictured building was erected in 1885 at a cost of $135,000. The school was renamed Central High after the 1911 construction of South High.
The school was built in 1911 and was the second of 14 high schools to be built over the course of Akron Public School district’s existence. In 1956 the South High School building became Thornton Junior High School and housed grades seven through nine until its closure at the end of the 1978-1979 school year.…
In1923 The Sisters of St. Dominican purchased what would become their campus from Arthur Hudson Marks, an industrialist and former B.F. Goodrich vice president. The “Elm Court” mansion, built in 1911, was renamed Our Lady of the Elms. It became the sisters’ living quarters.
The spacious West High included a 1,200-seat two-level assembly room, a walled rooftop garden, and a modern gymnasium with running track. West graduated its largest class in 1931 — 125 students in January and 221 in June. Its final graduating class in June 1953 had only 136 members. Eventually, West became a junior high school…