Bartlesville High School started out as both a senior high and junior college, and thus was known for years as "College High." The original buildings were completed in December 1939 and dedicated on March 10, 1940. There is a 1939 photo of the building facades. The campus originally served 585 students in grades 11-14. On January 8, 1940 those students, who had been attending Bartlesville's Central High School, moved 3/4 mile south to the impressive new building with its Streamline Art Deco styling. Today's Bartlesville High School serves approximately 900 to 1,000 students in grades 11 and 12.

In 1939 the 20+ acre campus at 17th and Hillcrest Drive was valued at $25,000. It was purchased from John H. Kane and C.E. Burlingame for $10,000, which was the most allowed by the federal Public Works Administration's regulations. Another depression-era federal agency, the Works Progress Administration, built a sandstone rock amphitheater along with four tennis courts and other athletic fields to the east in the area occupied today by Custer Field. The amphitheater had a built-up stage in the center surrounded by three rows of seats in an oval shape, and was reportedly located at the site of the new field house. A small brook meandered through the area and through the present-day Fine Arts Center, which at that time was a grove of trees.

Col-Hi's original design capacity was 800 students. The architect, John Duncan Forsyth, designed the building in the Streamline Moderne style, a late variant of Art Deco which peaked around this time. Forsyth had used the same style in his 1937 residence at 29th and Birmingham in Tulsa. Forsyth also was one of the architects for the 1937 Art Deco style Daniel Webster High School in Tulsa, which has many of the same interior architectural elements as BHS. Forsyth was also the lead architect for the magnificent Marland Mansion built in Ponca City from 1925-1928. The general contractor for the construction of College High was the Ray Construction Company of Coffeyville, Kansas.

Col-High's main building housed the auditorium and academic classes, and the field house or manual training building housed the band, orchestra, physical education, and industrial arts classes. The latter building was paid for by the Frank Phillips Foundation, and provided for some time the home court for the Phillips 66ers basketball team. The exterior of the buildings could have been brick, but a petition from 273 employees of the Dewey Portland Cement Company convinced the school board to build it of white-painted reinforced monolithic concrete. The white was offset by windows with cherokee red spandrels; that color is visible in a 1961 photograph.

The floors of the main building were marbleized asphalt tile, while the corridors had glazed tile wainscoting and terrazo stairwells. No two classrooms were alike, each arranged for a particular purpose with beautiful birch cabinets and built-ins. The building once had two fireplaces. One was in a recreation room lounge in the office area with several couches and chairs; that area is now home to the principal's and his secretary's offices. The other fireplace was across the corridor in an extensive "home-making" department, which was broken up into administrative offices after a new home-making department was built in the ground floor of the 1958 annex.

Original Costs:

Financing:

By March, 1949 the campus was packed with 1,042 students and bonds were voted to build a stadium and classroom addition. The amphitheater and tennis courts, which had often flooded, were covered with dirt hauled in from the downtown Phillips complex (Adams Building site).

The building and campus have seen many changes over the years, as summarized below:

• Parking was expanded by removing aisle rails in the south parking lot and restriping the lot for right-angle instead of slanted spaces; a new parking lot was built on the north end of the campus and spaces were added along the alleyway near the tennis courts. A metal bar along the Hillcrest parking was removed and replaced by a large curb. All lots were resurfaced by the K.C. Asphalt Company of Bartlesville.
• A ramp was added to the main entrance of the school.
• The exteriors of all of the buildings were repainted.
• The main gym floor was resurfaced and the field house hall floors were retiled.
• A Bruin tile mosaic was added to the floor of the main lobby.
• Large raised lettering reading COLLEGE HIGH SCHOOL on the exterior of the auditorium was removed.