"Langley High Opens Its Doors to Pupils Today: Is Eleventh Secondary School in Pittsburgh--Has Latest Equipment, Including Pool: Cost About $725,000." From The Sun, 6 April 1923.

Pittsburgh's eleventh high school, the Langley, named for the Pittsburgh astronomer, Samuel P. Langley, located at Chartiers avenue and Robina street, Sheraden, threw open its doors for the first time today, with the reopening of schools following the 10-day Easter vacation.

It would be the city's twelfth high school were it not that Riverside High, an old converted elementary school in West Carson street, which it replaces, is to be boarded up.

With 585 high school students and 23 teachers, transferred for the most part from Riverside High, Principal F. E. Fickinger today, for all practical purposes, simply resumed in the new school work left when the Easter vacation started in Riverside High.

Officials Pay Visit.
Vice President N. R. Criss of the board of education, a resident of Sheraden and a leader in the movement launched several years ago for a high school there; Dr. William M. Davidson, superintendent of schools; James Bonar, superintendent of buildings, under whose direction the building was erected, and a number of other school and other officials looked in on the opening day.

The opening, as usual for new school buildings, was without ceremony. The formal dedication will take place later.

The Langley, a steel frame, stone-faced 4-story building, contains 44 rooms, including, besides classrooms and the usual laboratories, domestic science and manual training suites, library, auditorium, stage, gymnasium, with boys' and girls' lockers and showers, swimming pool, with showers, office, men and women teachers' rooms, cafeteria lunch room, demonstration room and the usual power and light equipment. All excepting the swimming pool was ready for opening today.

Cost $725,000.
Complete, including land, building, and equipment, the cost of the school was about $725,000. The building was designed by McClure & Spahr, architects, and work was started in December, 1921, with S. M. Siesel of Milwaukee, the general contractor.

There is an expansive lawn in front and in the rear is an athletic field.

Built as one of the new junior-senior high schools, the Langley, for the present, will house only the regular 4-year high school classes. Its capacity is 1,000 students.

The refloored five rooms in the 11-room Thomas Wightman elementary school, Solway and Wightman streets, East End, also were opened today.

When sinking floors were discovered in some of the rooms in the Wightman school three weeks ago, classes were dismissed for a day while an investigation was made and the school was later reopened with the five rooms closed off. It was expected the reflooring would take two months but the school board's repair force, working until midnight many nights, finished in three weeks.

The five rooms were not only refloored but new desks put in the rooms, and as the ceiling also had to be torn out to reach the floors above, modern electric lighting fixtures were substituted for the obsolete type of fixtures with which the rooms were formerly lighted. It is estimated the repairs will cost about $20,000. The five rooms done over were in an older part of the Wightman building first erected 25 years ago.

Last updated: 13 May 1999.