Chandler High School, c. 1947

Open

Known as one of Arizona’s oldest schools and often heralded as the state’s most beautiful school, Chandler High School first opened in 1914

As early as 1911, when the Chandler Improvement Company laid out the new community, land was set aside for a public school.  Until a permanent school could be constructed, a temporary school was set up in a tenthouse. Construction of Chandler’s first permanent school building began in February of 1912, but the population was growing so fast that expansion plans began immediately.

In 1914, voters passed a measure to secede from the Mesa High School District and form their own high school district, and Chandler’s first high school class graduated on May 29, 1918. The graduation ceremony was held in the arcade at the San Marcos Hotel. Three students graduated in that first class. Four years later, in 1922, Chandler High opened with much celebration.

The modern building, designed in the Classic Revival Style, boasted 30 classrooms, including full physics and chemistry laboratories. A 1,000 seat state of the art auditorium, with beautiful acoustics, was also built on the school grounds. Designed to be semi-fireproof by the Southern California architecture firm of Allison and Allison, it was constructed using over 1.75 million bricks, 3,750 barrels of cement, and only 70 linear feet of wood. The entire cost for construction of the new high school was $250,000. Chandler High featured an electric clock and bell system that could ring in every classroom, or allow the office to buzz into an individual classroom. A telephone system connected every room to a switchboard in the main office.

Over the years, several additional buildings have been added to the school – gymnasiums, music buildings, the industrial arts building, and a television studio among them. The school district partnered with the City of Chandler to build the Chandler Center for the Arts on the high school campus in 1989.

Through it all, the original building continues to hold a special place in the heart of the Chandler community. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.