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1907 Postcard – South Central High School Spokane WA – Destroyed by Fire 1910
Item:
Used colour lithograph postcard — South Central High School, Spokane, Washington, mailed November 4, 1907Condition: Good used condition, light corner and edge wear consistent with age. Some light soiling to the image face. The colour lithograph image remains clear and attractive. A pencil notation on the reverse in a later hand reads \"South Central High School / Burned – 1910\" — a historically significant annotation.
Front:
Colour lithograph view of the High School building, Spokane, Wash. — the magnificent Romanesque Revival brick building with its landmark clock tower, showing the full facade, grounds and tree-lined setting. The image titles read \"High School.\" at upper left and \"Spokane, Wash.\" at upper right in red. A handwritten message fills the right margin of the image, beginning \"Dear Bl, Why don\'t you write and tell me what is going on for Christmas, miller.\" Published by Newman Post Card Co., Los Angeles, Cal. — Made in Germany.
Back:
Undivided-style back printed \"POST CARD.\" with publisher and printer details. Postmarked Spokane, Wash., Nov 4, 8 PM, 1907. Addressed to Miss Anta Scroggin, Ilo (or similar), Idaho. Franked with a 1-cent green U.S. stamp from the 1907 Jamestown Exposition commemorative series depicting Captain John Smith (Scott 328). The pencilled annotation \"South Central High School. Burned – 1910\" added later by a collector or archivist who recognised the building\'s fate.
Historical Background
This postcard documents one of the most significant — and tragic — landmarks in Spokane\'s educational history. South Central High School was built in 1891 as Spokane\'s first high school and was a prominent community landmark before fire broke out in the basement boiler room on June 21, 1910, gutting the interior completely. All of the library\'s books and classroom equipment were lost. The exterior walls were left standing but were deemed unsalvageable.
Citizens responded by passing a bond issue of $500,000 to rebuild on the same site. Former President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone in April 1911, and the renamed Lewis and Clark High School opened in April 1912. Lewis and Clark stands on that site today and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
This postcard was mailed nearly three years before the fire, making it a pre-disaster document of the building in its original form. The 1-cent Captain John Smith Jamestown stamp (Scott 328) is a bonus for stamp collectors, issued specifically to commemorate the 1907 Jamestown Exposition in Virginia — the 300th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in America — making this a genuine period usage of a commemorative stamp on real correspondence.
The German-printed colour lithograph process used by Newman Post Card Co. was the dominant high-quality postcard printing method of the Edwardian era, producing richer colours than domestically printed alternatives.
