The photo above was taken at the Bruce School which was built in 1888. Being built so early, the schoolhouse
was one of the few structures to have experienced all the great floods of 1892, 1903, 1908, once in the
teens and in 1951. When Argentine was annexed in 1910, the name of the school was changed to Lincoln and
the address from 4th and Strong Avenue to 24th and Strong Avenue.
To the north of the school was the American Smelting Company which was later occupied by the Kansas City
Structural Steel Company. The first principal was John Smith, and the first faculty was Lena Brown, Ethel
Stafford and W. D. Holmes. During the school's early years, high school pupils attended classes in two rooms
upstairs until the completion of the new Argentine high school building in 1908.
|
