The High School Debate: A City’s Moral Geography
A leading clubwoman makes the case for converting a downtown hotel into a high school, arguing that exposure to the city’s bustle is part of a real education.
In an effort to secure the divergent views of the people upon the location for the proposed new high school building, the Tacoma Times requested the position of Mrs. Alice Palmer Henderson, president of the City Federation of Women's Clubs. She replied: 'For the Tourist hotel site. Decidedly! I can think of no good argument for the present high school site, nor one against the Tourist hotel location. Pacific Avenue, between Ninth and Eleventh streets, would be more central, and the choice is between the present and the Tourist hotel locations. The latter is within a block of two car lines, a short distance from a third, and very near all the other car lines of the city. If the entire city were looked over, it is more than doubtful if another available plot could be found as favorable as the Tourist hotel site. It favors no one district, but all. It is on the bicycle path and is approachable on the level, a consideration by no means small to parents of growing girls.' She argued that the building, if converted, would stand as a 'landing advertisement' for the city. 'Do desirable additions to a city inquire into the nice and beauty and equipment of gambling dens and saloons? What more effective advertisement than that building which, upon a hill, cannot be hid? Returning tourists would write columns about it. Our University of the People would still be the tourist's hotel, wherein education might be housed and from which it might expand.'
“Do desirable additions to a city inquire into the nice and beauty and equipment of gambling dens and saloons? What more effective advertisement than that building which, upon a hill, cannot be hid?”
This debate highlights an early 20th-century tension between 'quiet' pastoral learning and urban-centered civic life. Today, as cities struggle with school zoning and the conversion of surplus office space, Henderson’s argument for placing schools at the nexus of transit and public life remains a core urbanist principle.
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