Brewer Schools During World War II Population grew after the war

by Brian Swartz

Brewer experienced substantial population growth after World War II, with extensive housing developments appearing along Parkway North and Parkway South, and new roads were built to accommodate the growth. Returning veterans married and started families; the city’s schoolage population increased, too. Soon after the war, the city bought the Burr Lot, low ground between State and Parker streets. A contractor drained, filled, and graded the site upon which the two-story, 10-classroom State Street School was built. Its driveway opened onto Center Street, and its main entrance faced State Street. The school opened in September 1948 and closed in 2012.

Across Center Street rose a two-story building containing a shop upstairs and a gym downstairs, with a long flight of stairs linking the two floors.

Constructed by T.W. Cunningham Inc. for $236,608, the building served the adjacent Brewer High School and opened in January 1948. Houses continued rising in Brewer, and more students packed the existing schools. The school department bought 13 acres off the newly extended Washington Street in December 1948 and soon built the one-story, 12-room Washington Street School.

Even that facility could not accommodate the burgeoning school population. After acquiring a large lot at the intersection of Parkway South and Pendleton Street in South Brewer, the school department constructed the eight-room Pendleton Street School, which opened in 1958. Students shifted there from two older elementary schools that closed for good.

The wood-framed Brewer High School had once occupied a lot at the intersection of South Main and School streets. Closed when a new high school was built on Somerset Street in the 20th century, that building was torn down. Its vacant lot came in handy by 1959, when the school department decided to build a one-story, three-classroom school on the site. Accommodating the overflow from the two-story, brick- built Dirigo School across South Main Street, the School Street School opened in 1960.

With the existing high school bursting at its seams, in the 1950s the school department bought land on Parkway South, about a block from Wilson Street. Shaped like the letter “U,” the modern Brewer High School opened in stages, with one wing (the U’s left side) opening first. Juniors and seniors moved there in the late 1950s, thus freeing space at the older high school. Construction continued, and the other wing (the U’s right side) opened a short while later.

Joined in the middle at the gymnasium, the wings were dubbed the Freshman-Sophomore Wing and the Junior-Senior Wing. More students attended Brewer High as school-age populations increased in Brewer and Orrington, Holden, Eddington, Clifton, and Dedham, which all sent students to the school.

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The 1960 federal census reported 9,672 people living in Brewer. The school department bought a lot on Capri Street (created post-World War II) and constructed the small Capri Street School to ease the student numbers at the State Street and Washington Street schools.

Except for some additional construction (such as a new music room) at Brewer High School, physical school expansion in Brewer reached its highest tide with the Capri Street School. Lured by cheaper land and country solitude, families were moving from Bangor and Brewer to neighboring towns, soon to experience their own growth-related issues.

Maine law lets towns without public high schools tuition their students to public high schools like Brewer and Bangor and John Bapst Memorial, a

Rocky Ridge Motel

former Catholic high school reopened as a secular high school in September 1980. Many couples started moving to Holden, Dedham, Orrington, and elsewhere in the latter 20th century so their children would have a choice of high schools.

Brewer’s population dropped to just above 9,000 people in 1980 and remained at about that level for the next few decades. With a declining schoolage population, the school department decided to consolidate students in pre-K through eighth grade in the new $33.4-million Brewer Community School.

Constructed on the grounds of the Pendleton Street School, the 150,000-square-foot BCS has five wings and several dozen classrooms. Its opening in the early 2010s saw all remaining elementary schools closed and the Brewer Middle School sold for conversion to apartments. The Capri Street, Pendleton Street, State Street, and Washington Street schools were torn down. A multi-level housing complex now occupies the State Street School site, and public parks exist where the Capri Street and Washington Street schools stood.

The Brewer Public Library relocated from the rear of Brewer City Hall to the School Street School; the move improved library parking and accessibility.