Old Bemidji High School Arch Completed and Shown to the Public

People stopped by Bemidji High School on Tuesday to celebrate a special monument that represents 80 years of the previous building.

The celebration that evening recognized the completion of the reassembled Bemidji High School arch, which was salvaged when the old high school on 15th Street was torn down. With its placement near the current high school entrance on Division Street, the arch has now become something alumni can remember the old building by.

“It was stored in my godmother’s tool shed until last fall, and last fall it was delivered out here and they dug the hole for the foundation and this spring the pieces started to go back together,” explained Linda Lemmer, committee chair for the group Old Bemidji High School Remembered. “They were all numbered when they were taken apart and they were sequentially put back together.”

Bemidji’s first graduating class was in 1903 from Central School. The city proudly opened its first high school in the fall of 1910, but the building had a short life after it burned down in January 1921. The doors of the old Bemidji High School on 15th Street opened for students for the first time on September 12th, 1922, and almost 100 years later, the reconstruction of the old school entry arch will help commemorate that upcoming anniversary.

Lemmer shared that they are proud to be celebrating shared history between past, present, and future students.