amUSIngArtifacts

*Post written by Mona Meyer, Archives and Special Collections Metadata Librarian

Indiana’s 1816 constitution made Indiana the first state in the nation to start a state-funded public school system.  According to Article 8, Section 1:

“Knowledge and learning, generally diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement; and to provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all.”

This was the ideal; the reality took many years to come into place.  Initially there wasn’t a sufficient tax base.  In addition, there was pushback from many who believed education was a private matter, often provided by the church, or in the case of the wealthy, by tutors.  And let’s be VERY clear here: ‘equally open to all’ did not mean all….women, blacks and Native Americans were excluded.

Bringing this down to the local level, the first public school in Evansville was Canal Street School, built in 1855 and located at 310 Mulberry St. Initially it housed both elementary and high school students, with the high schoolers attending classes on the 3^rd floor.

As the population of Evansville, so did school enrollment, and the school itself grew in size.

Additions continued to be added, until eventually the school had 5 buildings, the largest amount of school buildings in one location in the city.  You could no longer recognize the initial school.

In 1859 another school was built in the area to deal with the growing population, called Carpenter School.  It was named after businessman and philanthropist Willard Carpenter.  (You may recognize Willard as the name of a library he donated to the city in 1885.)  Colloquially, Carpenter School became known as Lower School and Canal as Upper School, in reference to their respective locations to the Ohio River.

Sometime between 1910-1914, Canal School (by this time the word “Street” was dropped from the name) was renamed Wheeler School, after Horace Q. Wheeler, a man who was instrumental in setting up the public school system in Evansville.

Through the years, patterns in population growth changed, and by 1972 there was no longer a need for Wheeler School. It closed 117 years after it was built, and was razed in 1974.