Fitchburg High School

Date: 1937
Location: Fitchburg, MA

Profile manager: Chris Whitten

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17:33: Chris Whitten edited the Text on Fitchburg High School [Thank Chris for this]

Categories: Fitchburg, Massachusetts | Massachusetts High Schools.

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The first Fitchburg High School building was built in the city of Fitchburg, Massachusetts in 1830. A new building was erected in 1869. In 1895, a still larger Fitchburg High School was built.

Wallace Way, the stairs leading up the school, was presented to the city by Hon. Rodney Wallace. (Wallace also donated the Wallace Library and Art building, as well as the Ingalls Memorial Library to the town of Rindge, NH, and the Wallace House at Smith College.)

In 1937, a new Fitchburg High School was built on the same site, Academy Street, at the top of the Wallace Way steps. This new school building was considered significant enough to merit write-ups in national magazines.

In the late 1990s, Fitchburg finally outgrew the building on Academy Street. They invested 38 million dollars in a new 235,000 square foot high school on Ashby State Road. It opened in the fall of 2000.

The older high school became Academy Middle School. The old middle school located next to it, B.F. Brown, seems to have become some sort of magnet school (is this right?).

The FHS football rivalry with Leominster High School — embodied by the annual Thanksgiving "Turkey Bowl" — is one of the oldest in the country. In 2008 they met for the 103rd Thanksgiving and the 125th time overall.

See the Fitchburg High Alumni Association website.