Harrison Hill Elementary School

Fort Wayne Community Schools, 355 South Cornell Circle, Fort Wayne; prekindergarten through fifth grade; the Hawks, in purple and white; built in 1924 and named for its neighborhood; a century old in 2024

The Name: Most Fort Wayne elementary schools carry a person's name. This one carries a place. Harrison Hill was built in 1924 and named for the neighborhood in which it stands, the district says, and the neighborhood's name is where the documented trail ends. Nothing in the district's centennial coverage, the newspaper's account of it, or the genealogical society's files explains where the Harrison Hill neighborhood itself took its name, and this page will not supply the obvious guess about a president. What the record supports is simpler and, in its way, better: a south side neighborhood grew up, needed a school, and gave the school its own name.

The Building: The school was designed by Charles Weatherhogg, whose buildings are scattered across Fort Wayne's best streets, and it opened as a bigger institution than the one that stands now: a kindergarten through ninth grade school. The need was real. South Side High School, opened in 1922 a short walk away, had to house primary and intermediate students of its own until 1925 while Harrison Hill was being finished. Additions followed over the years, and by 1931 the school held more than twelve hundred students, a figure no Fort Wayne elementary approaches today. From 1964 to 1971 the building doubled up again, housing Harrison Hill Junior High alongside the elementary school. The nine grade school is now a prekindergarten through fifth grade building, but the bones of the crowded original are still the school.

Enrollment: The federal record opens late in the school's life and still shows a big building. The National Center for Education Statistics counted seven hundred eighty students here in 1987 and a peak of eight hundred thirty five in 1989. The count slid for twenty years, to five hundred seventy five in 2007, and has since settled in the low six hundreds: six hundred twelve students in 2025, taught by forty eight teachers, about thirteen students to a teacher. The teaching staff has grown while the enrollment held: thirty teachers in 2019, forty eight in 2025. The neighborhood's children have changed more than the numbers. In 2025 Hispanic students are thirty six percent of the school, Black students twenty eight percent and Asian students fifteen percent; eighty five percent of the student body is minority enrollment. The twelve hundred of 1931 are gone, but the building has never been empty.

A Century: On September 14, 2024, Harrison Hill celebrated one hundred years, opening the building on a Saturday afternoon to students, staff, alumni and neighbors, with photo displays, historic artifacts and guided tours of the halls. The Journal Gazette marked the centennial the next day. The school's customs are younger than the building and sturdy in their own right. Its PTA created the Gobble Off in 1988: every year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, children compete to gobble most like a real turkey, and the winner takes home a large frozen turkey while the runner up gets a pumpkin pie. Students are sorted into houses and families that stay together for their whole time at the school. The S.T.A.R.S. program, Students and Teachers Achieving Real Success, dates to 1997, and G.E.M.S., Girls Educated to Maximize Success, to 2009.

Today: In 2026 Harrison Hill is an open, operating elementary school of about six hundred ten students on South Cornell Circle, the Hawks, past the century mark and into its second hundred years. It remains what it was in 1924: the neighborhood's school, wearing the neighborhood's name.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne Community Schools, news release, September 13, 2024, republished by AroundFortWayne: Harrison Hill was built in 1924 and is named after the neighborhood in which it is located; from 1964 to 1971 the building housed the elementary school and Harrison Hill Junior High; the centennial celebration of September 14, 2024 at 355 S. Cornell Circle.
2. Stan Sussina, "Harrison Hill Elementary School celebrates 100 years," The Journal Gazette, September 15, 2024, collected in Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: built in 1924, named for the neighborhood, and the 1964 to 1971 junior high years.
3. ARCH, Inc., Facebook post, April 23, 2020, collected in Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: the circa 1925 building and its architect, Charles Weatherhogg.
4. Fort Wayne Community Schools, Facebook post, October 1, 2020, collected in Allen County Genealogical Society, Elementary Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: built in 1924 with several additions over the years, and more than 1,200 students attending in 1931.
5. Indiana DNR Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, post of March 28, 2024, collected in Allen County Genealogical Society, High Schools in Allen County, Indiana, Allen INGenWeb, 2026: South Side High School housed primary and intermediate students until 1925 while Harrison Hill Elementary School was being constructed.
6. Harrison Hill Elementary School, About Us page, harrisonhill.fortwayneschools.org, 2026: the centennial event with photo displays, historic artifacts and building tours; the houses program; S.T.A.R.S. started in 1997 and G.E.M.S. in 2009; the Gobble Off created by the PTA in 1988, with a frozen turkey for the winner and a pumpkin pie for the runner up.
7. National Center for Education Statistics, Harrison Hill Elementary School (180363000530), as republished by Public School Review: enrollment of 780 in 1987, peak 835 in 1989, 575 in 2007 and 612 in 2025, forty eight teachers, teacher counts of 30 in 2019 and 48 in 2025, the 2025 composition, and minority enrollment of 85 percent.
8. Prep Sportswear, Harrison Hill Elementary School store, 2026: the Hawks, in purple and white.