By Tim Kirsininkas, Marketing & Public Engagement Manager
On this date in 1965, the Charles Haines Junior High School building at 9th and Indiana Streets was officially dedicated. The building is now operated in a joint partnership by the Park District and Library, but do you know about the man the building is named after?
St. Charles businessman, Mayor, and School Board President Charles Haines
The “new” Haines School on 9th Street under construction in the 1960s
For much of its early years, the school system of St. Charles struggled and operated as two entirely separate systems on either side of the river. The earliest students of St. Charles paid tuition fees directly to the first schoolteachers of St. Charles, who often taught classes in the living rooms of their homes. The late 1800s saw the construction of two new dedicated school buildings on either side of the river, but each building quickly became outdated and overcrowded with pupils as a new settlers continued to arrive in St. Charles.
Early St. Charles students, ready for a day’s lesson.
The East Side school, one of St. Charles’ first school buildings, stood at the site of Lincoln Elementary today. The building served students of all ages, often in overcrowded classrooms.
Debates soon erupted about how to best serve all students of St. Charles, regardless of which side of the river they resided on as the buildings reached capacity. Quarrels in the 1890s between administrators, students, and families drew the attention of local businessman Charles Haines, who decided to step in.
Haines, who owned several mills and businesses in St. Charles, offered up his family's farm plot located at Main Street and 7th Avenue to build a single, unified school. The debates between East and West side representatives erupted again, as west side residents felt wronged that their students would need to trek all that way to the other side of town.
However in the end, the offer was too generous to not accept, and for the good of all St. Charles students, the Charles Haines school building opened in 1899, with the first graduating class of four students receiving their diplomas in June the following year.
The original Haines School and St. Charles Community High School on East Main Street.
The building stood for over 50 years as a beautiful monument to education, complete with stunning architecture and large windows and skylights to provide the students of St. Charles with a singular combined school building that they could all be proud of. The first floor of the school housed 6-8th grade, the second floor high school students, and the third floor was devoted to the school gymnasium. Alumni of the school would include historian and schoolteacher Alice Davis as well as Col. Edward J. Baker.
An early class of high school students pictured in front of the Haines building in the 1910s
Haines was a lifelong bachelor and never had children, but Haines considered all the children of St. Charles his own, and was proud to leave behind his family’s estate to the benefit of multiple generations of St. Charles students. It was a common sight to see him checking in at the school, making sure everything was in top-notch condition for the students. Haines later served on the school board and a term as Mayor of St. Charles before his death in 1914 at age 70.
Unfortunately, despite all of Haines’ efforts, his school building, too, became outdated and overpopulated in the 1920s. New School Board president George E. Thompson helped oversee the effort again to build a new High School on the opposite side of town from the original Haines Building, and in 1926, the new St. Charles Community High School opened at 7th and Main Streets.
Thompson/St. Charles High School when it first opened in 1926
The Haines building, meanwhile, was converted into a middle school, but in the 1950s had fallen into disrepair and warranted the opening of the new Haines Middle School on 9th Street in the 1960s, once again giving students state-of-the-art resources and classrooms. Unfortunately, the original Haines school was put on the the auction block and deemed too costly to continue to maintain, meeting the wrecking ball shortly thereafter.
However, the Haines and Thompson buildings continue to stand to this day, proudly bearing the names of the men who dedicated their lives to the betterment of all St. Charles schools, and to providing all students of St. Charles with the best possible education they could receive.
Information from Reflections of St. Charles by Ruth Seen Pearson
