Hillyard schoolhouse a home to many
For a time – 1907 to 1924, to be exact – the incorporated community of Hillyard operated its own schools as Hillyard School District 122. After that, the community became part of the city of Spokane, and its schools came under the city’s Spokane School District 81.
The only remaining structure associated with the old Hillyard School District is Hillyard High School at 5313 N. Regal St. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, it is a fairly austere example of brick public-school architecture of the early 20th century.
Across town, Lewis and Clark High School is a much fancier example of the same, but with ornate gothic structural elements that are distinctly lacking at Hillyard, though Hillyard’s school once had a curvilinear Spanish Mission style parapet on the façade. That was removed when the building was remodeled for other uses.
The school is actually two separate, but joined, buildings, the north portion constructed in 1912 and the south portion (the annex) in 1922. There was some student unrest between the two construction projects.
When the 1912 three-story structure was built, at a cost of $50,000, there was no gym, so students played basketball at the YMCA and outdoor sports at nearby Harmon Field. Regal Elementary was the site for graduation exercises.
When Hillyard voters turned down a $28,000 bond issue in 1917 to fund expansion of the school, students were disappointed they would not get their gymnasium and auditorium. According to the narrative in the National Register of Historic Places, the “165 students, boys and girls, walked out of their classrooms and, grabbing an American flag, took to the streets, an action unprecedented in Spokane schools and probably not seen again until the restive years of the 1960s.”
A gym, auditorium, wood shop and new classrooms did come with construction of the annex five years later in 1922.
Even so, more space was needed, and portable buildings were moved to the site to accommodate students, who also were taught in rooms at the abandoned Arlington School between 1926 and 1932. The mix of permanent and temporary buildings that constituted Hillyard High School gave the school a campuslike appearance and the nickname of University of Hillyard. There was also the joke that if a freshman became lost, he would not be found in the myriad buildings and hallways until second semester.
A fire in the old Arlington structure in 1931 was the beginning of the end for Hillyard High and led to the 1932 construction of nearby John Rogers High School. Hillyard High, which saw its last graduating class in 1932, was vacant until 1943, when it was reconstructed after a fire. In the 1950s, it was sold and converted into apartments.
By the late 1980s-early 1990s, the building had fallen into disrepair and had an escalating crime problem among residents.
“We responded to a lot of calls there every month,” said Spokane police Officer Bonnie Sherar, who was a neighborhood resources officer in Hillyard at the time.
Beginning in the late 1990s and with the input of neighborhood activists, area businesses, AmeriCorps/VISTA, Block Watch, Northeast COPS Shop volunteers, an “adopt a room” program and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grants, renovations turned the building to a better and safer place. A lot of the residents took ownership in the appearance of the building and the crime statistics plummeted, Sherar said.
Despite all that, the old Hillyard High School may become vacant again, as it is one of the city’s affordable low-income apartments facing possible closure.
Since 1959 it has been known as the Martindale Apartments, and it has been in the news lately because a management company has not paid the building’s utility bills.
If the facility closes, the 41 residents won’t be graduating from Hillyard High School; they will be evicted.