German Lutheran School Expands in Kennewick
A new bungalow-style schoolhouse rises on Tacoma Street as the local German Lutheran community invests in its own educational infrastructure.
The German Lutheran people of the city are building a neat little frame school house on their lots adjoining the church on Tacoma street. The building is of the bungalow type and is thirty-four by twenty-four feet with full basement; has seating capacity of about forty pupils; will have furnace heat and all modern fixtures. Rev. Woker, their pastor, is at present teaching in the church. He told us when we called at the recess hour, that all the branches, including German, were taught, that are in our public school, with the exception of manual training; but as we found him using a shovel helping the men excavate, we rather think he was giving his pupils an object lesson in manual.
“We rather think he was giving his pupils an object lesson in manual.”
This reflects the period when ethnic communities often maintained their own parochial schools to preserve language and cultural identity, a common practice in the early 20th-century development of the Tri-Cities.
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