Guide to the Photographs of Fifth Avenue High School, 1865-1969
- Repository
- Heinz History Center
- Title
- Photographs of Fifth Avenue High School
- Creator
- Fifth Avenue High School (Pittsburgh, Pa)
- Collection Number
- MSP#30
- Extent
- .50 cubic feet (1 box)
- Date
- 1865-1969
- Abstract
- The Fifth Avenue High School was a public secondary school for the City of Pittsburgh built in 1896. The school was constructed after the Pittsburgh Central High was no longer able to accommodate the growing enrollment of high school students in Pittsburgh. The site for the school was once used as a city market and was leased by the city to the Board of Education for 99 years for the nominal fee of one dollar. Included are photographs of faculty, principals, students, organizations, and French orphans assisted by Fifth Avenue High School fund raising after World War I. General photographs include images of student life at Fifth Avenue High School, the faculty, and physical building of Pittsburgh Central High School.
- Language
- The material in this collection is in English.
- Sponsor
- This finding aid has been encoded as a part of the Historic Pittsburgh project a joint effort of the University of Pittsburgh and the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. Funding for this portion of the project has been donated by the Hillman Foundation.
- Publisher
- Heinz History Center
- Address
- 1212 Smallman St.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222
library@heinzhistorycenter.org
URL: https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org
Organizational History of the Fifth Avenue High School (1896-1976)
The Fifth Avenue High School was a public secondary school for the City of Pittsburgh built in 1896. The school was constructed after the Pittsburgh Central High was no longer able to accommodate the growing enrollment of high school students in Pittsburgh. The site for the school was once used as a city market and was leased by the city to the Board of Education for 99 years for the nominal fee of one dollar. The cost of the building was a major consideration to the members of the Board, and the architect, Edward Stotz, was told to keep the expenses under $250,000. When the building was completed in 1896, the total expense was under that figure at $247,000. The school opened with commercial and normal departments for students. These departments were autonomous and each had different directors. The first floor of the building housed offices, meeting rooms and training rooms for the normal school. In 1912, a Pennsylvania law brought Fifth Avenue School under the supervision of a single principal, Dr. Edward Rynearson. As a consequence of this consolidation, the normal department was transferred out to another school and Fifth Avenue High School became a "cosmopolitan school." An auditorium and physical education facilities were added to the school in 1926 through the persistent efforts of the school's students. Besides leading the school through administrative duties, Principal Rynearson gained national recognition as the founder of the National Honor Society in 1922. Fifth Avenue High School was naturally chosen as the site of the first chapter in the country. Changes in the Board of Education and of the facilities in Pittsburgh forced yet another change in 1928 when the school became a junior-senior high school.
Economic, social and demographic conditions of Pittsburgh Public School students greatly affected the Fifth Avenue School. When the school was built in 1896, the maximum age for compulsory education was thirteen, which allowed many lower income families to remove their children from the educational system and into gainful employment. During this period, the majority of the students were from upper-middle income families, many of who lived in Pittsburgh's East End. Fifth Avenue's location in the Hill District exposed the school to a diverse blend of ethnic communities who migrated to Pittsburgh's Hill. The school reflected this multi-ethnicity within its classrooms and included students from Jewish, Chinese, and African-American families and boasted of its cultural pluralism. During the mid-twentieth century, the Jewish Community continued to move from the Hill District to East Liberty and Squirrel Hill and the constituency of the Fifth Avenue High School eventually became mostly African-American.
In 1968, national desegregation laws were passed which made operating the Fifth Avenue High School difficult for Pittsburgh's Board of Education. By the mid-1970s, the Board decided to replace the aging structure and built Brashear High School in Pittsburgh's South Hills to relieve segregation problems. With the completion of Brashear, students from Pittsburgh's Hill District, who would normally have gone to Fifth Avenue High School, were sent to Brashear. With the change in the school structure, the Board of Education closed the Fifth Avenue High School.
Scope and Content Notes
The Fifth Avenue High School Photographs are housed in one archival box and are arranged alphabetically by folder title with general photographs of the school's students and faculty arranged in the front. Included are photographs of faculty, principals, students, organizations, and French orphans assisted by Fifth Avenue High School fund raising after World War I. General photographs include images of student life at Fifth Avenue High School, the faculty, and physical building of Pittsburgh Central High School. Of note are photographs of African-American students from both the period after World War II, when the student body was primarily African-American, and the period from the school's inception. Also included is a photographic album of portraits presented to the Pittsburgh High School by its class of 1865. While the majority of photographs in this album are unidentified, these appear to include both students and faculty of the original public high school in Pittsburgh.
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for research.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
These materials came in one accession in 1976.
Acc# 1976x Gift of Fifth Avenue High School.
Preferred Citation
Photographs of Fifth Avenue High School, 1865-1969, MSP# 30, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania.
Processing Information
This collection was processed by Ruth Salisbury Reid in c1976. Papers rearranged and inventory rewritten by Erin Clougherty on August 9, 1993.
Revision and rearrangement for the encoded version of the finding aid provided by Doug MacGregor on February 14, 2002.
Conditions Governing Use
Property rights reside with the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permissions to reproduce or publish, please contact the curator of the Archives.
Subjects
- Fifth Avenue High School (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
- Afro-Americans -- Education -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
- Education -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
- High schools -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
- Schools -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
- Students -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
- World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Schools