Walkerton's own school: the graded brick school and Walkerton High School, 1914 and 1942

A FIRST-CLASS HIGH SCHOOL BY 1907 · ALL TWELVE GRADES IN THE 1914 BUILDING · THE 1942 BUILDING, A MIDDLE SCHOOL SINCE 1968

By 1907 Walkerton's school was a town institution: Howard describes a substantial brick school building in the town, a graded school including a first-class high school — the plant the township era had grown into. Franklin N. Sheneman II's Southern St. Joseph County, the local history the corporation's own community relies on, carries the buildings forward one by one. A Walkerton school building constructed in 1914 housed all twelve grades. A new building constructed in 1942 took the high school in, and Walkerton High School's teams of the era were the Indians. In 1968 the 1942 building changed down a rung: the high school moved out to its new consolidated campus, and the 1942 building became the Harold C. Urey Middle School — the use it still serves, at 407 Washington Street, in the buildings entry below. The middle school's name is itself a Walkerton fact: Harold C. The 1914 building's later course — when the elementary grades left it, and what became of the structure — was not found in the record reached and rides with the elementary building's course as GAP-WKSCH-4. One alumnus fixes the old school in the wider record: Walter LaFeber, the Cornell historian, was Walkerton High School's class of 1951 — his whole, too, belongs to the people pass.

Sources:

1. Howard (1907), Part 53 (Walkerton): the substantial brick school building, a graded school including a first-class high school.
2. Franklin N. Sheneman II, Southern St. Joseph County (Arcadia Publishing), pp. 30–31: the 1914 building housing all twelve grades; the 1942 building; its conversion to the Harold C. Urey Middle School in 1968.
3. John Glenn School Corporation (jgsc.k12.in.us): Urey Middle School, 407 Washington Street, Walkerton — the 1942 building's present use.