Pueblo East High to celebrate old building and decades of history with final tours

Pueblo East High School will host free final tours of its old school building, 9 MacNeil Road, for students, faculty, alumni and community members of all ages on Saturday, May 20.

Tours will be split into three sessions. East will host graduates from the 1960s and 1970s at 10 a.m., graduates from the 1980s and 1990s at noon, and graduates from the 2000s to present at 2 p.m. DJs will be at each session playing music from corresponding decades. Yearbooks, commemorative bricks, limited edition T-shirts and hats will available for sale.

Pueblo's top stories: Sanchez officially named CEO of Sangre de Cristo Arts Center after 14 months as interim

"We don't want people to be sad that our building is going to be gone," East student council sponsor Gina Smith said. "We want them to celebrate that we still exist."

By the end of the 1950s, Pueblo's two public high schools — Centennial and Central — were swelling with new students from the post-war baby boom. In 1959, two new high schools — East and South — were introduced to accommodate the city's growing high school-aged population. East served students on the East Side who had previously attended Centennial, along with students from the recently developed Belmont subdivision.

In January 2019, Pueblo School District 60 consultant MOA Architects made a series of recommendations to the district concerning facility closures and upgrades. Some scenarios recommended by MOA Architects would have required the district to close East.

However, the prospect of closing East was extremely unpopular with members of the Eagle Empire. East students, teachers and alumni gathered outside the Pueblo D60 administration building for multiple demonstrations and left several public comments at board meetings in the following weeks.

In November 2019, Pueblo voters approved a $218 million bond that would build five new school buildings for Pueblo D60 — including new East and Centennial High Schools. East and Centennial students will attend school in the new buildings next fall.

To celebrate the old East high building and look toward the future, East Principal Andy Clementi will lead the May 20 tours. Clementi will start his tours by showing visitors the gold-painted Civil War cannon the East football team won back from South last September. Clementi also will make stops at East's "crooked hall," swimming pool, cafeteria, gymnasium and other areas with plenty of stories to tell.

Before construction crews begin the demolition process of the old East High building this summer, important items, furniture and records will be relocated to the nearby new school building. Items relocated to the new building will include several historic artifacts in the Pueblo East High School Alumni and Heritage Hall.

Not every Heritage Hall artifact will be possible to relocate, however, East recently received a $32,000 grant from the Robert Hoag Rawlings Foundation to purchase a 3D scanner and classroom software to create a digital Heritage Hall. East alumni foundation president and 1969 graduate Gene Wilcoxson said the school is looking into making the digital Heritage Hall available on the alumni foundation website.

"While we're moving more than 50 years worth of history and memorabilia into the new building, we have to recognize that there is another, let's say at least 50 years of history to come," Wilcoxson said. "We have to save some space for that."

In addition to the open house on May 20, Pueblo D60 will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new East high school building, 1521 Constitution Road, at noon on Monday, May 15. Guided tours of the new building will be provided.

Pueblo Chieftain reporter James Bartolo can be reached at JBartolo@gannett.com

Pueblo education news: 'A positive step forward': School Finance passes, freeing up millions for Pueblo schools

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo East High to host final tours of old school building on May 20