Saginaw United: How Two High Schools Became One

Born from a city divided were two separate school districts—the homes of Saginaw High School (East Saginaw) and Saginaw City High School (Saginaw City). After the merger of the two separate East & West Saginaws in 1890, the issue of school district consolidation lagged behind for years to come, continuing to divide the community between the two sides of the river.

Only after an apathetic consolidation vote, the involvement of the Michigan Supreme Court, and a controversial vote for a new combined Board of Education, did the school districts join, still maintaining a separate high school on each side of the river.  In the Castle Museum of Saginaw County History’s  new exhibit, Saginaw United Schools, guests can follow the interesting path of these two schools as they finally come together as one, Saginaw United High School. 

As part of the creation of this exhibit, the museum staff worked closely with the Saginaw Public School District in both the collection and preservation of memorabilia from the two buildings to be renovated, and the presentation of the SPSD story of creating Saginaw United High School today.

According to Chief Historian Tom Trombley, “The exhibit celebrates our work with the SPSD to collect and preserve a wide variety of materials connecting the rich history of Saginaw's high schools. Without the photographs and objects that are being featured in this exhibit, we could not tell this story.”

“The thing we need to remember is that high school was not an expected item for cities to concern themselves with back when the two cities of East Saginaw & Saginaw City were founded,” states Trombley. “It wasn’t expected that students would continue through high school and people in the 1870’s didn’t think the state should be paying for this luxury, so when the two cities constructed their first high schools, Saginaw was at the forefront of public education in that sense.”

“Things don’t always translate exactly to the terminology we use today, but specifically the first high school classes in each city graduated their first students around 1871,” continues Trombley. “The actual classes started in the last days of the 1860s, and in the case of the West side classes were held at Union School, which is roughly where John Moore is located today; and on the East side it was located where the Central Fire Station is currently located.”

“In 1880 East Saginaw constructed its first high school building where Saginaw High would be located on South Warren; and in 1888 Saginaw City constructed its first high school, which is where the Court House Annex is located at the Traffic Division on Fayette and Harrison streets, which would eventually become Arthur Hill.”

Although the current Arthur Hill High School building was built in 1940, Arthur Hill High School was actually named back in 1901. “Arthur Hill had given scholarships to the University of Michigan, so Arthur Hill High School was named in his honor,” explains Trombley. “When the two cities joined in 1890 the two schools were called East Side and West Side High School, and after the two cities joined and became one for the next 36 years they still each had separate school boards and two separate school districts. It wasn’t until 1926 when the two separate districts joined and became one that the two high schools were named Saginaw High and Arthur Hill continued with the name it had adopted 25-years earlier.”

According to Trombley, the effort to join the two districts was contentious but not as tumultuous as one might assume. “Back in 1926 when the vote was put on the ballot to join the two school districts a different philosophy existed. The schools didn’t give out free textbooks and in a way it was like having separate post offices."

"Mainly, the battle was like a turf war and the people creating most of the turmoil were the people on the two different school boards, half of whom didn’t want to lose their powerful positions. There was actually low voter turnout when the question was put on the ballot and there wasn’t a huge public outcry after the two districts were joined.”

After the merger of the two districts, each became neighboring high schools with the Saginaw River serving as the delineation line between the two neighborhoods; and by the 1940s each school had well over 1000 students in attendance.

“By the late 1930s both schools were severely overcrowded, but Arthur Hill was the more overcrowded of the two,” notes Trombley. “They were using five or six different buildings around the city for classes and this exhibit will include a map of where the different buildings were located. The current Arthur Hill building was constructed with money from President Roosevelt’s Works Project Adminis WPA grant, and matching money put up from the school board. A referendum was put on the ballot to construct the new Saginaw High only that went down to defeat, so it wasn’t until the 1950s that a grant was obtained to build the new Saginaw High. No WPA grants were available and costs had gone up a lot by 1952 -52.”

According to Trombley the same architect was used for both buildings and that was the firm of Franz & Spence, who had the largest firm in the region. When they suppled the design work for Saginaw they claimed the same plans for Arthur Hill were reused, only it is difficult to see how that is the case insofar as the similarities between the school designs is marginal.

“You can see a similarity with the central core and lunch room, but once you move over to the angled wings and details of Saginaw High, there are significant differences,” comments Trombley. “We do have the complete architectural plan for both buildings included in the exhibition.”

“The requirements for building plans changed dramatically after World War II and Saginaw High had a pile of architectural drawings.  Their rivalry really goes back to this idea of two separate cities and Alumni Field, which was down Holland Court where Longfellow School is located is where high school football was played,” notes Trombley. “It was constructed as the field for Saginaw High and then when the two districts merged it became not the practice field but the game field for both schools. When Arthur Hill eventually built their current stadium, Saginaw High adopted the other one.”

“With the new United Saginaw High being built on Genesee & Niagara it goes back to bringing the school back into the heart of the city,” continues Trombley. “Back in the 1930s students would go to school in shifts and be out in the city for five hours between classes, but this idea that education should be in the heart of the city has always been present in the sense that what would become Arthur Hill and Saginaw High are very much located in the heart of these neighborhoods, with Arthur Hill close to Court Street and Saginaw High close to the business district and Hoyt Library and very visible.”

“Both Saginaw High and Arthur Hill were designed for post-war expansion in a way that really didn’t happen, which started to change once Saginaw High was constructed. What we forget is that those schools were also serving as high schools for every township in the school district,” notes Tom.

“Township schools did not extend beyond the ninth grade for the most part, so if students wanted to go to high school they had to go to one or the other.  At one time Golfside wanted to be part of the city and it wasn’t until the state legislature mandated that a school board had to offer K-12 education that things pushed in that direction. The city’s position was that you had to be annexed by the city to be part of the school district, and one of the first to join was Zilwaukee and Kochville. Once the state allowed them to merge at that point there were almost no school districts left, so the point where  the state allowed them to merge changed both schools profoundly because prior to that they were county schools.”

Yearbooks collected from both schools are also being preserved digitally in conjunction with Saginaw Public Libraries and will become available to the public as they are scanned through Biblioboard.com. 

The exhibit itself tells the story of the two schools through using photos gathered from these yearbooks, along with trophies, blueprints, and various other memorabilia saved and preserved through the decades, such as the infamous ‘School Horn’.

Dating back to 1889 when the Saginaw City High School was completed, the ‘horn’ was used in a lumber camp and became a symbol of class pride. The Senior class would give it to the Junior class and the Sophomores would take it from the Juniors. It was passed over at the annual Junior/Senior Banquet and the Sophomores would attempt to heist it.

In 1900, after being handed out of a window of the West Side Moose Hall Club, it was carried way on horseback and hidden in a haystack. In 1909 the Horn was hidden in the Saginaw River at the side of the GS & L Boat House near the Court Street Bridge; and the Class of 1904 made a new mouthpiece and left off the Class of 1903, essentially ‘erasing’ the class.

Thankfully, with these efforts by The Castle Museum and Saginaw Board of Education to preserve the memories and memorabilia of these two landmark iconic schools within the Saginaw community this amazing legacy will not be erased, but instead preserved for posterity for future generations to absorb and appreciate.

The Castle Museum is open seven days a week and is located at 500 Federal Street in Downtown Saginaw. . For further questions or information, please contact the Museum  at 989-752-2861.