Below you find many pictures and information about our beloved school. It is in our hopes that this webpage will grow in the coming years to include more information and pictures so check back often.
Your help is needed to expand this page! Please contact Mrs. Cameron at [email protected] if you have any pictures or information about the history of Humboldt Park School.
The Original Humboldt Park School
According to Wisconsin Historical Society property records, our present building…
was built on the location of an earlier school which had been annexed in 1925. In 1929, Guy E. Wiley, Chief of Construction Division for the Milwaukee Board of School Directors, designed the current school. The Humbolt Park Elementary School displays several elements common to Wiley’s school designs of the period, especially the door treatments with decorative silhouettes and exaggerated architraves, and the vaguely Art Deco-style tower treatments with prominent vertical bays culminating in small round-headed arches.
In the mid-1930s, MPS Superintendent Milton Potter initiated a new system of teaching reading. Library Technique was based in progressive educational ideals of the time and allowed students to gain reading skills by pursuing personal interests in a reading area and to develop at their own rate; rather than by learning from a traditional common reader text. Following the superintendent’s annual reports in 1936 and 1937, which emphasized the positive results from partial elements of Library Technique, Humboldt Park School was the first Milwaukee school to adopt the whole Library Technique method in 1938. Library Technique gained modest national attention, partly due to the 1938 National Education Association annual meeting, held in Milwaukee that year. Within a decade, most of the Milwaukee public elementary schools used Library Technique.
The following photos show the construction of Humboldt Park School
