Louisville Girls High School Alumnae Club
Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: 1998_055-UA
This small collection (1.6 linear feet) features mementos, yearbooks, photographs and newspaper clippings associated with the Louisville Girls High School and its Alumnae Club. Series I. contains histories and a copy of the application for a Kentucky State Highway Historical Marker to honor the LGHS (1988). Series II includes a collection of yearbooks, individual commencement scrapbooks, and numerous photographs of students and alumni events, the bulk of which are associated with the fiftieth year anniversary of the Class of 1919. The collection was organized as submitted rather than chronologically. Wherever possible, names of donors of original scrapbooks or photograph albums have been highlighted on the box list. Series III (Loose Rolled Papers) provide enlarged reproductions of the original LGHS charter from the Charter of the City of Louisville.
The copyright interests in the Louisville Girls High School Alumnae Club Records have not been transferred to the University of Louisville.
1.6 linear feet (1 records center box, 1 flat)
The Louisville Girls High School dates to 1856 as part of the revised city charter for the city of Louisville, which declared that the "education of females" to be a responsibility of the city. The first Louisville Female High School opened April 7, 1856 on Green Street (now Liberty) between First and Second Streets and was shortly thereafter moved to the corner of Center (now Armory Place) and Walnut Streets. A total of sixty-nine students were enrolled and the first graduation took place in 1858.
A new site, "the Curd House," on First Street between Chestnut and Walnut Streets was dedicated in 1864 (1998 site of the Ahrens Trade School) and served as the Louisville Female High School until 1898 when five hundred and ninety eight students were enrolled, and simply outgrew the old facilities. Combined with branch girls' schools of Eastern and Western and the Commercial High Schools, Louisville Female School then moved to Fifth and Hill Streets. The school formally changed its name in 1903 to the Louisville Girls High School and continued to grow rapidly. Somewhat relieving pressures of growth, the J. M. Atherton High School for Girls opened in 1924 to serve seven hundred girls from the eastern side of Jefferson County. (Atherton was made coeducational in 1950.)
In 1929 Shawnee Girls High School, also known as Western Girls High School, took another four hundred students, yet LGHS continued to outgrow its facilities. In 1933, the Reuben Post Halleck Hall was constructed on nine acres at Second and Lee Streets and was dedicated in 1934. That large building served as Louisville Girls High School until the last class graduated in 1950; at that time, it became coeducational and changed names to DuPont Manual High School.
Part of the University of Louisville Archives and Special Collections Repository