Then and Now: Salem High School

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The city’s first public high school opened in a residential building.

A residential building on Academy Street in Salem once housed the city’s first public high school. 

What is now Academy Court apartments, pictured here, opened in 1890 as Academy Street School, with eight classrooms and a mansard-style tower for a roof, according to historical records from Salem Museum & Historical Society. In 1895, a second building went up beside it, specifically for serving the upper grade levels or high schoolers.

The school was renovated in 1901 to add indoor toilets in a middle area that connects the two buildings, based on information from the Salem Educational Foundation & Alumni Association.

But the site was not a school for all of Salem’s students. While white children studied on Academy Street at the time, black students attended school in several different locations in the segregated neighborhoods south of Main Street, according to the museum and historical society.

Enrollment on Academy Street gradually climbed to 88 students by the end of the 1909-1910 school year. That was the same time that the local school board expanded the high school to four years from three years, according to the foundation & alumni association. 

By 1912, Salem needed more room for its growing student body. The high school relocated from the Academy Street School to a newly constructed building at 114 North Broad Street, which is now the site of Salem’s City Hall. 

Nineteen years later, in 1931 the day before the final exams for the semester, a fire broke out at the Broad Street building, forcing students to relocate to temporary sites throughout the city. The students were scattered until the new Andrew Lewis High School opened in 1933 on College Avenue, according to the foundation and alumni association.

Now Salem High School has much different quarters, situated atop a hill on Spartan Drive, off Main Street. The school is known for its academic excellence. It has a graduation rate of 97% and enrolls approximately 1,292 students in grades 9 through 12, according to the school’s 2020 ranking in U.S. News & World Reports Best High Schools. 

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