Maryville High School (Missouri)

History

Founding 18471867

• 1847 – The first school was part of the first courthouse of Nodaway County in Maryville. It was specifically created to be the county seat of Nodaway County because of its central location. The log building was 32 feet by 20 feet and was at Second and Main Streets. A new frame court building was subsequently constructed.

  Washington campus 18671965

First building 18671882

• 1867 – The first school's land, which would become the Washington campus at First and Vine, was acquired and built for $7,000. The school was a 2-story building with four rooms and was both an elementary school and a high school. The average attendance in 1881 was 11 males and 44 females. A description of the campus says "It is located between Wall and Vine Streets, north of and bordering on State Street, fronting west. With the building, there are two acres of ground set in bluegrass and shade trees, the whole presenting a handsome appearance." The school block is staggered off the grid so that all the school buildings would all be situated so they looked head on into the oncoming street which gave it a grand boulevard appearance. Wall Street would subsequently be renamed Dewey and State Street would be renamed First Street once the Maryville numbered streets took effect in the 1880s. The school property over the years would push further east eventually tripling the acreage of the initial area.
• 1874 – An all-black Frederick Douglass school was created. It would never be incorporated into the traditional Maryville High School and would dissolve in 1934.
• 1882 – James B. Prather pays $1,200 to acquire the remains of the torn down the school to be used to build a stable to house 120 horses and being one of the biggest stables in Missouri. Prather is owner of Faustiana Farms noted for its racing horse breeding—notably Elwood which won the 1901 Kentucky Derby and Faustus which was great grandfather of Black Gold which won the 1924 Derby. Prather was one of the original 1868 founders of Nodaway Valley Bank.

  Second building 18821908

• 1882 – The new school was constructed for $43,000. The new two-story building had 12 rooms.
• 1894 – Maryville's system of elementary schools, dubbed ward schools was created with the Thomas Jefferson school at 1st and Charles; James A. Garfield school at Thompson and Mulberry; and Benjamin Franklin school at 7th and North Main. The elementary school by the new building was in a small white building and called the George Washington school. The high school area was referred to in news reports as Central or Central High School.
• 1906 – The first classes of the Fifth District Normal School were held in the school while preparations for the new buildings for the campus were underway.
• 1908 – Janitor W.L. Robey fell into a pool of boiling water that had leaked from the furnace while trying to fix the building furnace. He pulled himself out and finished the repairs, went to the superintendent to report the problem, and then walked two blocks to his room, where he died from the scalding.

  Third building 19081965

• 1908 – The second building was torn down, and the white house grade school moved to a residence. A bond issue for $75,000 resulted in the construction of a three-story building, with the basement being used by the high school and the first floor by the Washington grade school. Gymnasiums were on opposite sides of the building, with boys on one side and girls on the other. The gymnasiums had no seats. It was designed by Maryville architect A.A. Searcy who designed more than 100 churches in northwest Missouri and southeast Iowa. he designed the Burlington Junction school and the Elks Club on Main Street. The design was to follow the earlier structure closely but make major improvements to ventilation.
• 1921 – A gymnasium was added to the north side
• 1923 – Football coach Leslie Edward Ziegler called his team a bunch of Spoofhounds. The name stuck and became the mascot.
• 1931 – Construction of the new $108,000 Eugene Field elementary school on land just east of the high school. The new school consolidates the four elementary schools into one school. The Washington name becomes the name of the high school.
• 1934 – Frederick Douglass's all-black school formally dissolved due to a lack of students.
• 1934 – On October 23 a tornado hit the school about 5:30 p.m. during football practice. Under coach Wallace Croy, the team went from the practice field adjoining the school to the dressing rooms on the north wing, which had its roof ripped off. The school was held at churches and other buildings in Maryville during repairs. The tornado killed five at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp at what today is Beal Park, which was six blocks northeast of the school. The CCC was building grain elevators. Harry S. Truman was campaigning in Maryville at the courthouse for U.S. Senate at about the time of the storm.
• 1937 – Undefeated Maryville defeats Central High School 51-27 to win the Missouri state basketball championship at a time when there were no divisions in the state. Maryville placed third in the state tournaments in 1936 and 1938 also when there were no divisions.
• 1937 – Maryville, Tarkio, Mound City, and Savannah begin playing in the Northwest Missouri Conference. Maryville would stay in the conference until 1962.
• 1942 – Harlem Globetrotters play local team dubbed the Shamrocks in two games in the gymnasium.
• 1953 – A cafeteria was added to the Eugene Field building to feed the elementary and high school students on a staggered schedule. Students from the high school walked in all weather, at the block-long distance from the high school to the elementary school, for meals.
• 1953 – The Varsity football team played its first night home game under the newly installed lights at Beal Park. This is a change from playing home games in the bowl field by the high school. One of Beal Park's most unique features is that it is designed so that parking on top of a hill overlooking the field in the 102 River bottoms permits spectators to watch the game inside their cars.
• 1959 – Voters in Maryville and the surrounding 22 rural schools approve "reorganization" of the county school system to roll the 22 rural schools into the Maryville school district. The consolidation would start Maryville on the path of looking for a bigger school. The consolidation would also prompt the college to close its Horace Mann High School.
• 1961 – The varsity basketball teams began playing their home games in the newly built Bearcat Arena after outgrowing the limited seating of the Washington School gym.
• 1962 – Maryville, which had been playing much smaller neighboring rural schools in the Northwest Missouri Conference, is a founding member of the Midland Empire Conference, which pits it against more comparably sized schools in Savannah and St. Joseph.
• 1963 – High school varsity teams begin playing most home games at Bearcat Stadium. The practice field and junior varsity continue to play at Beal Park. They would eventually play all of most of their home games at the stadium until the new field by the high school opened in 1976.
• 1965 – The last class graduates. The school is repurposed as a middle school, with the 5th and 6th grades moving from Eugene Field to join the 7th and 8th grades that had been in the Washington school before.
• 1998 – The building is torn down to make way for a new middle school adjoining the south campus. Portions of the auditorium's classical plaster relief are displayed at the Nodaway County Historical Society Museum.
• 2018 – The school district ends its 151-year ownership of the Washington school property by selling it to the city of Maryville for a new $4 million Maryville Public Safety police and fire headquarters. The Eugene Field elementary school on the east end of the property continues its education mission.

  South campus 1965present

• 1965 – After constructing a new school on the south campus, the last class to graduate is 1965. The cost for construction was $950,000. The bond issue was approved in March 1963. The cost of the original 40 acres was $31,000, and school officials said it would have cost $150,000 if they had to condemn land around the Washington school. The original footprint was 64,300 square feet and on a 40-acre campus. Among other considered locations were expanding at the original location, Washington location, and just west of the Northwest Missouri State University campus. Joe Radotinsky is the architect. Radotinsky was the architect of several schools and office buildings throughout the Midwest several of which are on the National Register of Historic Places including Wyandotte High School, Sumner Academy of Arts & Science, the American Hereford Association headquarters. A Hereford bull, which has become a Kanas City landmark, was part of the design. The Richard Bolling Federal Building in Kansas City, which he designed, was completed in 1965, the same year as the high school. Among the additions was a gymnasium where the school could play its home basketball games. Home varsity games had been played at Bearcat Arena after it opened in 1959 rather than in the limited confines of the old Washington School gymnasium.
• 1970 – The vocational school building opened south of the main building.
• 1976 – Football field opens down the hill east of the high school, ending an era when games were played at Bearcat Stadium. The field was made possible by the approval of a $340,000 bond issue to build it.
• 1977 – "M" is placed on the banks of the field.
• 1999 – Middle school opens about a quarter-mile southeast of high school but is connected via a trail to the high school. Washington School is torn down.
• 2006 – The school moved from its traditional medium-size Class 3 category to Class 2. It was runner-up in the state championship football in 2008 and won the title in 2009.
• 2010 – School moved back to Class 3
• 2016 – Lee and Nina Schneider Performing Arts Center opens on the east side, towering over the school, prompting the school to switch its official entrance from the east side to the west side. It is named after Lee Schneider, who directed the school band for many years. It is 19,000 square feet and seats 698 people. Concerts had been held in the gymnasium. The earlier Washington school building had a separate auditorium. Schneider taught music at the school from 1960 to 1992 and developed the Marching Spoofhounds into a powerhouse that performed at half time in 1973 of a Kansas City Chiefs football game and made a 1990 appearance in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in 1990.
• 2019 – School drops back to Class 2.
• 2020 – School moves back to Class 3.
• 2024 – Football, softball, and soccer fields east of the school have brightly colored Artificial turf installed at $2.5 to $3 million. In addition, Nodaway Valley Bank paid to build a video Daktronics scoreboard on the 50-yard line on the east side of the football field. Maryville also painted one of its water towers on Edwards Street a mile northwest of the school in school colors and put the school logo on it.