New Lisbon High School

On April 21, 1900 the Oshkosh Weekly Northwestern reported that the firm of William Waters & Son was successful in it's bid to win the design contract for the high school at New Lisbon, a community about ninety five miles west of Oshkosh in Juneau County.  The building was to cost $25,000 and the younger Mr. Waters was on his way to that city to advertise for a contractor and make other preparations.  A year later there was another article regarding the New Lisbon school, praising the community of a thousand citizens for building a fine and modern school.  The headline read "High School at New Lisbon Tho Small May Give Oshkosh Ideas."  Perhaps that was an admonishment, suggesting the Oshkosh School Board may wish to scrutinize the plans of the building; there being a protracted discussion about a new high school in Oshkosh.  

The write-up went on to describe the new structure as two stories 73'x 105' built of Bedford limestone and red pressed brick.  The assembly room, measuring forty  by sixty was on the second floor as well as the principal's office, and two each of the following: laboratories, recitation rooms and cloak rooms.  The first floor was occupied by five class rooms, the basement housed wash rooms, furnace room, a large play room for use on rainy days and the third floor attic was one large room outfitted as a gymnasium.  The building was   a transverse layout with large wings on either side of a receding wall at center containing an arched entry of segmented limestone, other trim as well as the foundation were of the same stone.  The rest of the structure was of red pressed brick, laid with recessed courses every two feet or so giving the first floor walls a layered look.  A band of stone divided the first and second floors with brick work quoins decorating the corners of the second story walls, the window featured jack arch lintels.  Above it a tall hip roof covered it all; four small dormers graced the front of each wing and great chimneys towered over the roof.  A large dormer  dominated the center of the roof just below an elegant bell tower.  By the start of classes 1901, the students of New Lisbon had a fine new school but which was to have a short existence for on the night of March 10, 1907 it was consumed by a fire.  All that remained were portions of the front entry, left wing outer walls and the chimneys.