Bartlesville
Public
School
Facilities

Bartlesville Public School Facilities

In February of 1915 the board of education paid J.C. Lang $500 for property at the northeast corner of 9th and Cherokee Avenue, formerly the site of the Johnstone home. A 1917 $100,000 bond issue built Central Junior High School at the site, the first Junior High in Oklahoma. Designed to house 450 students in grades 7-9, the facility held 653 students by 1924, when a $320,000 expansion to the east (the wider left portion of the building in the painting below) allowed the school to accommodate grades 7 through 12 by 1926. This addition featured an impressive auditorium which could seat over one thousand students and was noted for its acoustics. The English and music rooms featured small stages, and bookkeeping students were taught their skills in a new "imitation bank". The basement housed the manual training and auto mechanics rooms.

A year of junior college was added in 1927. By the time College High School was built in 1939, Central's green and gray halls were packed with 1,700 students and the uppermost grades left. The facility has remained a junior high/middle school since that time. In 1956 a home economics and cafeteria building was built just north of the main building for $157,287. The cafeteria kitchen was remodeled in 1968 for $12,150.

By the late 1980s the main building had deteriorated to a disgraceful state and the district seriously considered abandoning it. Community pressure to salvage the historic structure led to a 1993 bond issue that provided $4,462,748 to remodel the entire facility, including rebricking the exterior of the 1956 building to match the 1917/1924 structure. Community donations allowed the purchase of existing homes north of Central almost to Adams Boulevard, which were razed for a campus expansion and city park. The massive remodeling effort was completed in 1996. A phone system upgrade was performed in 2000. 2000 also saw the use of both school and community monies to purchase a dilapidated home at the northwest corner of the campus, which was then razed and its property incorporated into the park area.

Here is a summary of the many grade configurations at Central over the years:

   Years          Grades
1917 - 1926       7 - 9
1926 - 1927       7 - 12
1927 - 1931       7 - 13
1931 - 1933       7 - 14
1933 - 1939       7 - 13
1939 - 1954       7 - 10
1954 - 1982       7 - 9
1982 - 1986       7 - 8
1986 - present    6 - 8

Please direct any comments or suggestions regarding this page to:
Granger Meador, gmeador@bps-ok.org