North Side High School

1927 – present

North Side High School opened in 1927 at 475 E. State Blvd, Fort Wayne Community Schools' second high school, built for the growing north side of the city. It was designed by the Fort Wayne architect Charles R. Weatherhogg (1872-1937). Ten thousand people toured the building at its Labor Day 1927 open house, inspecting what the school's own fiftieth-anniversary history called an "ultra modern" school, a marvel of modern education. The first principal was Milton H. Northrop, known to students as "Pop." The first year had 42 teachers and 750 students. The first play was presented in October 1927.

The building was nicknamed the "Big Teepee," and its teams were the Redskins, a name chosen in 1927 for the area's Native American history. The early teams started a fighting tradition: over the first nine years the football team won 40, lost 24 and tied 13, by the 1977 Legend yearbook's fiftieth-anniversary history. The cross country team captured the state championship in 1938 and three times in a row from 1942 through 1944, and the same history credits the 1938 football team with a state championship, in the era before Indiana held football playoffs. The stadium is Chambers Field, named for Rolla Chambers. The commencement ceremonies of 1935 were probably the biggest in the school's history, the yearbook says: all three city high schools, North, South and Central, graduated together before almost 10,000 people. The Marching Redskins, founded in the 1920s, once broadcast a concert on WOWO.

The school's gymnasium had a second life as a professional arena. It first hosted the Fort Wayne General Electrics of the National Basketball League from 1936 to 1939, and the team again in the 1947-48 season. From 1941 it was home to Fred Zollner's Zollner Pistons, who passed with their league from the NBL into the Basketball Association of America and then the NBA, and who played at North Side until 1952, when they moved to the new 10,000-seat War Memorial Coliseum in a bid to keep the team in Fort Wayne. The gym held near 3,000 people. The school grounds also held professional baseball for a season: the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League played their first season, 1945, on the school's field. The old gym hosted school games through 2004, when a renovation converted it into the school's library; North Side teams now play in a new gym, By Hey Arena. Among the early graduates, William F. Borgmann went on to play on Michigan's national champion football teams of 1932 and 1933.

The modern record is a Summit Athletic Conference one. The boys basketball team won the SAC in 2005-06 behind guard Eshaunte Jones. The cross country team won the SAC in 2008 and reached the state finals for the first time since 1969. A losing-record basketball team beat Marion in 2010 to win the Class 4A sectional, the school's first sectional title since 2005. Football won the SAC in 2013-14, and basketball followed with the SAC regular season and tournament titles that year, part of an 18-1 start the school's history calls the best in the state, then a third straight regular season title in 2014-15 under coach Shabaz Khaliq; the back-to-back titles were the program's first in 35 years. The marching band placed ninth in the ISSMA Class B state finals in 2011. Mark Daniel, later Fort Wayne Community Schools' superintendent, taught math and business at North Side from 1986 to 1995.

In late summer 2015 the school board asked North Side to examine retiring the Redskins name. After a four-month process led by students, staff, alumni and parents, students chose Legends on 17 December 2015. The new name took effect with the 2016-17 school year; the colors stayed red and white, and the logo unveiled on 23 May 2016 shows the school's historic front entrance with a phoenix rising. The school is operating through 2026, serving grades 9 to 12; the federal National Center for Education Statistics counted 1,383 students in its most recent published census of the school, for the 2024-25 year.

Sources:

1. Legend yearbook, 1977 (Internet Archive), fiftieth-anniversary history: the 1927 open house and its 10,000 visitors; first principal; first-year faculty and enrollment; the early teams' records; the 1938 and 1942-1944 cross country titles; Chambers Field; the 1935 joint commencement; the WOWO concert.
2. "North Side High School (Fort Wayne, Indiana)" and "North Side High School Gym," Wikipedia, checked November 2026 (Weatherhogg; the General Electrics and Zollner Pistons tenancies; the 2004 renovation and By Hey Arena; Borgmann; the SAC seasons).
3. Kaitlyn Haines, "North Side High School Field," Clio entry, 27 October 2015 (the Fort Wayne Daisies' 1945 season on the school field).
4. FWCS news releases, 17 December 2015 and 23 May 2016, via AroundFortWayne (the Legends name, the effective year, the colors and the logo).
5. National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data, North Side High School (NCES ID 180363000550), 2024-25 school year (1,383 students, grades 9-12).