WESTPORT HIGH SCHOOL
IS FORMALLY OPENED.
3,000 PEOPLE LAST NIGHT IN-
SPECT NEW BUILDINGS.
Entire Equipment Represents Out-
lay of Nearly $500,000 -- Elabo-
rate Programme of Speeches
and Music Is Presented.
The formal house warming of the Westport high school at Thirty-ninth and Locust streets took place last night, nearly 3,000 people participating. The building was thrown open for inspection at 8 o'clock. There was no conspicuous array of decorations and festooning of school pennants and class colors, only the building was brilliantly lighted by electricity in each of its four stories. There was enough to see and appreciate in the common equipments of the school.
The patrons of the school began to arrive in automobiles and street cars at 7:30 o'clock. Before the opening time came the better part of the better part of the crowd had arrived and was strolling about the grounds admiring the strictly modern buildings which, on their completion, September 15, had cost close to $500,000.
Two features of the school equipment brought forth more comment, perhaps, than all the others combined. They were the gymnasium, said to be the finest of its kind in the West, and the domestic science department, where pretty girls in neat white aprons stood ready to tell their mothers modern ideas concerning pastry making and undiscernable patchwork.
The domestic science department has over 100 pupils. Not all of them are girls, and it is said the class record in fancy work has several times been broken by the deft fingers of boys also adept on the baseball diamond.
The art department and the chemical and zoological laboratories are also expensively fitted with the latest models and appliances. In the zoological room are thirty compound microscopes. The water color work and free hand drawing of some of the students of the art department created favorable comment among the amateur and professional painters who are patrons of the school and who were among the visitors last night.
At 9 o'clock the crowd was ushered into the auditorium, where an excellent programme was the piece de resistance of the house warming. This part of the school equipment was in perfect accord with the others, expense apparently having been overlooked in making it among the best of its kind anywhere.
The auditorium seats 1,400 people. In times of emergency, like last night, chairs can be placed int eh aisles so that 200 more can easily be accommodated and all hear.
After the "Coronation March" had been played by the high school orchestra, Frank A. Faxon, vice president of the school board, made a few remarks of welcome. Addresses were given by Judge H. H. Hawthorne and Dr. Herman E. Pearse, both of whom were instrumental in procuring the big and modern high school building for Westport.
One of the features of the programme was a bass solo by Reid Hillyard, a pupil of the school. Mr. Hillyard received his musical training at the school.
