HomeMy WebLinkAbout1914 - Foster High Schoolwww.TUKWILAREPORTER.com » JUNE 2012 5
A Foster history
First, it's good to see a bona fide Tuk-
wilan as editor of the Tukwila Reporter.
Congrats, Dean. Grace Gylling would be
proud of you.
I read your editorial recollections about
Foster High School and have a couple of
clarifications.
Foster High didn't start in 1952. It's
true that the first high school building
on the current site opened in January of
1953, but Foster actually became an ac-
credited high school in the fall of 1914.
High school classes were held at first in
the Foster Grade School, which stood on
the northern portion of the upper part
of what is now Joseph Foster Memo-
rial Park. In 1922 a separate high school
building was constructed immediately
south of the grade school. You can still
see the steps leading from where the high
school building was located to the lower
playfield at the park.
Foster's first graduating class, in 1915,
was a class of one, Ava Sophia Adams.
Recently one of the suggested names for
the current school district administration
building was in honor of Ava Sophia Ad-
ams, submitted by a Showalter student.
Foster Grade School, where high
school classes were first held, was de-
molished in 1938 when Showalter was
built, as a condition of state funding.
Three other grade school buildings at the
time were also to be demolished (Show-
alter was supposed to be the only grade
school the district would ever need), but
the Thorndyke, Tukwila and Riverton
grade school buildings were saved as
community clubs. The first two still ex-
ist. Tukwila is the Tukwila Heritage and
Cultural Center, and Thorndyke, the old-
est surviving school building in Tukwila
having been built in 1908, is a private
residence on 42nd Avenue South. The
Riverton grade school survived for a few
more years as a community club, but it
was demolished to make way for South-
gate Elementary School. Southgate, of
course, became the Tukwila Commu-
nity Center after the school closed due
to declining enrollment in the 1970s,
and the building was torn down when
the current Tukwila Community Center
opened. The Riverton/Southgate site is
now Southgate Park.
One other point: The building that
stood just east of Foster High School,
where the Tukwila swimming pool is
now, was Arcadia Rest Home, a tuber-
culosis clinic and then a nursing home.
Quite some time before that it was a pri-
vate residence.
All of this history and a lot more can be
found in the local history book "Tukwila,
Community at the Crossroads," which is
available for sale at Tukwila City Hall
and for checkout at the Foster Library, a
branch of the King County Library Sys-
tem.
Ron Lamb
Tukwila