Oak Park & River Forest High School
Oak Park, Illinois

My School

In 1873, rooms for Oak Park’s first high school students were provided by the Central (elementary) School, at Lake Street and Forest Avenue. The first graduation class of three got their diplomas in 1877.

Oak Park’s first dedicated high school was built in 1892, on the SW corner of Lake Street and East Avenue. Some of the first science labs provided for secondary schools in America were built for this school.

[This is consistent with my knowledge during my years there, that ours was one of the top-ten public high schools in the States. Nothing OPRF can now brag about.]

That building was, in 1917, bought by the Archdiocese of Chicago and operated by Dominican Sisters as a home for motherless boys. It was called Bishop Quarter in honor of the first Bishop of Chicago. In 1941 it became Bishop Quarter Military Academy and existed until 1968. The Village of Oak Park razed the building in 1969.

[We always knew it by the name of “Bishop Quarters”. We knew it was a military academy, but never saw the boys in uniforms. Walking by, we often saw the boys out in the playground. While we thought some of them were cute, we never had anything to do with them. I guess we thought they were not from Oak Park, and besides, were troublemakers or they wouldn’t be there in the first place. Left them alone. Felt sorry for them.]

Some administrative changes took place and eventually the school became known as the Oak Park and River Forest Township High School.

[I never knew what “township” had to do with anything. Didn’t even know what the term was until I started doing genealogy in the 1980s.]

In 1905, plans for a new and larger high school building were being formed and land was bought between East Ave. and Scoville Ave. on Ontario Street. The new building (1907) would accommodate 800 students. It would have a library and chemistry labs. The North Wing was completed in 1913 and the building stretched from Ontario Street to Erie Street.

The quadrangle on the west side of the building was built in the 1920s. You could essentially walk around in circles on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors of the building, but I never knew of much of anything being in the middle of that block-size quadrangle. I believe they were considered “light wells”, see below. Our field house was built in 1927, the first in the nation for a high school.

[I always took our superior gym facilities for granted. Didn’t every high school have a “field house”? Didn’t every high school have home-team bleachers for football games that were brick and the equivalent of a three-story building?]

By 1928, we had the most complete facilities in the nation for girls’ PE. In my brother’s years of high school there were other additions – 1953 and 1957. The field house floor was remolded from wood [great for our “sock hops”] to concrete in 1979.

Kids from River Forest paid tuition to go to Oak Park High. The school districts of the two villages consolidated in 1949.

During my years in high school there, the north wing was rebuilt. In 1958-59 (my sophomore year), in the north wing we got a new library, art, industrial arts and cafeteria facilities.

[Yes, I remember the old cafeteria for my first year there, 1957-58. It was actually the wooden gym floor that was no longer used. It was a “tall” room, two-stories, but on that 2nd story, only an indoor-track around the perimeter. There were wire screens on all the tall windows, so no breakage would occur from stray basketballs and such. It gave off a dark, echoey feeling eating in there with all the noise.]

In those “light wells”, which I never saw much of in the quadrangle, they built labs, classrooms, a language lab, counseling offices, health and attendance suites were built in 1960 and 1962.

[Now I graduated in June 1961, and I don’t remember new labs, counseling offices, health suites, or “attendance suites”. What the heck are they? Speaking of health suites ... I remember our nurse, Miss Wilmarth. She was a very old lady. Her office was in the basement. OK, so “health suites” is the new word for nurses’s office. Miss Wilmarth’s “office” was a suite of rooms. Girls to the left; boys to the right. The first room door from the hall had her desk in it, a sink, file cabinet, and a line-up of chairs the girls, or boys, would sit. Everyone in the lineup would have their temperatures taken. The girls usually got a glass of peppermint extract with hot water from the sink. She’d send you off to lie down with a hot-water bottle on one of the cots. When you felt better, you’d go back to your next class with a nurses’ excuse. Miss Wilmarth was the nurse when my mother was at Oak Park High in 1932.]

In the late 1960s the school undertook its most ambitious construction program. The building was extended south across Ontario Street to connect the academic building with the physical education facilities.

[This ruined Oak Park High. We used to have such a grand entrance to the high school right there on Ontario Street. It would take too many words to describe, a picture would do so much better. But once you saw it, and then see how they took the whole facade away and filled in the street and the girls’ playing field, you’d would understand why it really stinks. Not only that, the gift to the school of my Class of ‘61, which was a huge clock on the brick wall of the girls' field house, was removed.]

The new addition included a 1700 seat auditorium and a smaller Little Theater as well as two new cafeterias, 54 classrooms, large group instruction rooms and expanded music rehearsal facilities.

[Great. I guess when you live in a village 4 miles by 1 mile and have no where to go, you fill in.]

The civil rights movement in the '60s with its fair housing, equal rights, and diversity, had a very great and negative impact on the life my high school in the decades to follow. From that time on, the excellence and national position we held as a high school has dropped, never to be recovered.

In 1974, the Board of Education initiated plans to acquire the south field, the area immediately south of the field house and north of Lake Street. By the spring of 1976 the 1.2 acres had been purchased. The existing structures were demolished and the space developed for girls’ physical education and athletics. They replaced all the windows in the “old building” and upgraded the heating and AC systems.

[When I was there, there was no air conditioning, and the windows opened. We survived.]

Between the 1980s and 1990s, a continuing issue for the school (among financial problems) was the concern that African American students were not achieving at rates comparable to the majority of the student body.

[And why was that? Why is it that the “majority of the student body” has a rate of achievement that is different? if the strong family values and work ethic is the same? After 40 years of fair housing, equal rights, and diversity. And why shouldn’t it be? especially if they are living in Oak Park? Isn’t that why, after all, they wanted to live in Oak Park from the time they started moving in?]

As a result, the Board of Education adopted the African American Achievement Initiative in 1998.

In the mid-90s, the high school bought the land bounded by Lake, East, Scoville, and the “El” tracks for new athletic fields. The football stadium was renovated, synthetic turf. A new parking lot on the South Field for staff during the day, the village in the evening; and on weekends, a free-for-all (school and village) including a Farmer’s Market.

[Where are the farms? Who’s kidding who here? A Chicago suburb with farms? Right!]

And lastly, OPRFHS now has a day-care center!!

While I'm glad I went to Oak Park High, it is now not - and has not been for quite some time - the school I knew and loved, and I'm very glad that we provided a different education for our children.

REFERENCE

Source: OPRFHS Official Website

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