Central High School

1845 – 1970 (as a high school)

The site: No school ground in South Bend is older. The land downtown was donated by Alexis Coquillard, the trader who co-founded the town, and the county seminary was completed on it in 1845. A seminary building of about 1856 served as South Bend's first high school, as the Tribune's Throwback history records; it was demolished in 1872, when a new South Bend High School rose on the site. The student paper of Adams High School, looking back, counts the 1872 building's first graduating class at four students: Charles Henry Bartlett, William Mason Green, Ida Ellsworth and Lillie Spain.

The building: The present building was designed by William B. Ittner, the St. Louis school architect, and built 1911 to 1913 for $625,000 — fifty classrooms, twelve laboratories, a capacity of 1,500. It opened as South Bend High School, the city's only high school. Its name became South Bend Central in 1924, when Riley opened across town — Riley opened that year as a junior high school, and became a combined junior-senior high in 1929, so Central remained the city's only senior high school until 1929. Behind the main building stands the Boys Vocational School, built about 1918 and incorporated into the school in 1928. In the middle of the century the university downtown also began in these rooms: Indiana University's evening extension classes met at Central, the start of the line that became Indiana University South Bend, carried in that entry below.

Wooden and Burnham: Two coaches made the school's name national. Elmer Burnham coached all sports at Central from 1916 to 1935 — 118 wins, 30 losses and 8 ties in football — before going on to Purdue. John Wooden taught English and coached basketball and baseball at Central from 1934 to 1943, nine years, before the Navy took him; the record he built afterward at UCLA began here, in a downtown gym. The basketball teams won state championships in 1953 and 1957, with 28 sectional, 12 regional and 4 semi-state titles across the school's course; Central's fourteen IHSAA state championships across all sports are the most of any South Bend school, past or current.

The closing and the afterlife: Central closed as a high school at the end of the 1960s. Two dates stand in the record and both are carried: the Clio record of the building places the last high-school years in 1970, the school then serving as a junior high and middle school until 1976; Mayor Pete Buttigieg, speaking at the 2012 dedication of the new Saint Joseph High School downtown, put it at 1968 — "the first time since South Bend Central High School closed its doors in 1968," he said, "the city again has a high school located downtown." The building was made a local landmark in 1982 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 (No. 85001206). In the late 1990s it was renovated into apartments, and it stands today at 303 and 330 West Colfax Avenue as Central High Apartments — the Historic Lofts — the oldest school ground in the city still in daily use, as housing.

Sources:

1. National Register of Historic Places nomination, South Bend Central High School (No. 85001206, listed 1985) — the Coquillard donation, the seminary of 1845, the Ittner building of 1911–1913 at $625,000, its fifty classrooms, twelve laboratories and capacity of 1,500, and the Boys Vocational School.
2. Building South Bend (the local landmarks record) — the 1856 seminary building as the first high school, its demolition in 1872, and Central the city's only high school until 1929.
3. South Bend Tribune, Throwback, 1 February 2018 — the seminary building as South Bend's first high school.
4. The Adams Tower (Adams High School student newspaper), 1 March 2019 — the renaming to Central in 1924 and the four graduates of the 1872 building's first class.
5. The Clio entry for Central High School (Dukes & Garner) — the high school's closing in 1970, the junior-high use to 1976, and Indiana University's first evening classes in the building.
6. Today's Catholic, 4 September 2012 — Mayor Buttigieg's 1968 date at the Saint Joseph High School dedication.
7. The school record as carried in the standard athletic references — Burnham's tenure and record (1916–1935), Wooden's (1934–1943), the state championships of 1953 and 1957, and the fourteen IHSAA titles.