Before today’s middle schools, there were junior high schools. In 1909 Indianola Junior High School in Columbus, Ohio became the first to open in the United States. Junior highs were usually 7th and 8th grade schools, although some would also contain 9th grade. Up until then, kindergarten through 8th grade students attended elementary (grade) schools, and then high school for grades 9-12.
The Minneapolis School Board proposed switching to junior highs in 1910 and again in 1916. Their new program would follow the national models of the time. Moving to the junior high program model was intended to discourage students from dropping out and to better prepare students for high school through exposure to a program based on specialized subjects and giving some choice of subjects and activities.
Franklin School was originally built in 1869 on 4th and Washington but burned down in early 1873. It was rebuilt on 15th Ave N and 4th St N that fall but it burned down again in 1916. Franklin was then rebuilt specifically as a junior high on the same spot in 1917, thus becoming the first stand-alone junior high in Minneapolis. Bremer School, built in 1887 here on the Northside, served as both an elementary and a junior high school from 1917-1922. Seward, built in 1887 on the Southside, opened as an elementary school but also functioned as a junior high school from 1924-1926 with lower grades.
The 1920s saw a number of new junior high schools being built: Nokomis (1920), Bryant (1923), Jefferson (1923), Phillips (1926), Sanford (1926) on the Southside; and Jordan (1922), Lincoln (1923), Henry (1927) on the Northside. In 1931, Folwell and Ramsey junior highs were built on the Southside while 1932 saw Sheridan School, which combined both grade and junior high, was built in Northeast. It would be another 24years before any more junior highs were built; Northeast (1956), Anthony (1957), and Olson (1962). Anwatin was built in 1960 as St. Margaret’s Academy and was purchased by Minneapolis Public Schools in 1974.
I should stop here to clear up any confusion. Patrick Henry was originally built as a junior high school in 1927 and wouldn’t add high school grades until 1939. It was then a combination junior high/senior high until sometime after 1963. Also, Olson Junior High was switched to an elementary school at one point in the 1980s at which point Anwatin became a Northside junior high school. Later, Olson was switched back to a middle school.
Four of our Northside junior highs, Franklin, Jordan, Lincoln and Olson, had something that only two of the others (Bryant and Northeast) had — swimming pools! Franklin and Jordan, along with Bryant, also had greenhouses attached to them.
Eventually, in the early 1990s the junior highs were switched to middle schools which were either 6th-8th grades or 5th-8th grades. By the late 1990s there was a trend to make some schools K-8th grades, an idea which had been gotten rid of almost a century earlier in favor of the junior highs.